The Night Stalker jc-2

by James Swain

  “Did you steal this little baby, Teresa?” he asked his wife. “You gotta tell me the truth.”

  “Yes,” Teresa said, still lying on the floor.

  “He’s not ours?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” he said.

  He dropped his gun into my hand. The uniforms rushed across the living room, and shoved him against the wall. I laid the gun on the couch, and took Martin into the breezeway. The baby had started to cry, and I rocked him against my chest.

  “Welcome to the world,” I said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  I remained in the breezeway with Martin while the police arrested Teresa Rizzoli and her husband, and read them their rights. As the police led the Rizzolis past me, Teresa stopped to look lovingly at the child she’d tried to make her own.

  “I gave him his meds at noon,” she said. “He’s not due again until four. I used to be a physician’s assistant. I know what I’m doing.”

  “How was his coughing?” I asked.

  “It was okay. I was going to take him to a doctor this afternoon.”

  One of the cops pushed Teresa down the breezeway, and I went into the apartment. Burrell was talking to Martin’s real mother on her cell phone. She placed the phone next to the baby, and I tickled Martin’s belly and made him giggle. Through the phone I heard Lonna Wakefield laugh and cry at the same time. Burrell lifted the phone to her face.

  “We’re bringing your baby back to the hospital. See you soon.”

  “Thank you, thank you!” Lonna Wakefield shouted through the phone.

  Burrell folded her phone. “Let’s go.”

  “Not so fast. He’s got a smelly diaper.”

  “We’ll lower the windows.”

  “Great. I’ll drive and you hold him.”

  “On second thought, let’s change his diaper.”

  We went to the baby’s bedroom, where I laid Martin on a changing table and began to undress him. When Jessie was born, I stayed home for two weeks and got to know my kid. I hadn’t lost my touch at changing a diaper, and Martin was soon good to go. As I picked him up, Burrell’s cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID and groaned.

  “The mayor?” I asked.

  “Who else?” Burrell said.

  “Don’t talk to him.”

  “Why not? I’ve finally got some good news to share.”

  “He’ll go to the hospital, and steal your thunder.”

  “You really think he’d do that?”

  “Absolutely. You rescued this baby and deserve the credit, not him.”

  “Let’s be honest, here. You rescued him, Jack.”

  I handed Burrell the baby. “The official version of events is that you found him. I was along for the ride. Got it?”

  Burrell shot me a funny look. She was honest to a fault, which could be a real character flaw when you were rising up the ranks of the police department.

  “Whatever you say,” she said.

  I drove Burrell’s Mustang to Broward General Medical Center with Burrell in the backseat cradling Martin. I normally paid scant attention to the insane traffic that defined Broward’s highways, but today there was more at stake, and I put Burrell’s flasher on the dash and turned it on. The spinning blue light had a magical effect, with cars slowing down to safe and normal speeds. A block from the hospital, I glanced at Burrell in the mirror.

  “You ready?” I asked.

  “For what?” she replied.

  “My guess is, Jimmie and Lonna Wakefield have told everyone in the hospital the good news. It probably leaked out, which means the hospital is swarming with reporters. You’re about to become everyone’s favorite cop.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “It all depends on how you handle it. Have you ever held a news conference before?”

  Burrell shook her head.

  “I’ll give you some pointers. Make sure you have the parents with you, plus the hospital staff. You want smiling faces standing behind you. This is a joyous event. The baby’s fine, the parents are happy, life is wonderful.”

  “Make it into a celebration,” Burrell said.

  “Exactly. Also make sure that you have the reporters’ credentials checked before you start. There are a lot of nuts out there, and you don’t want someone lobbing a crazy question at you, especially if there are cameras rolling.”

  “No nuts.”

  “That’s right. Now, here’s the tricky part. How do you talk about Teresa Rizzoli? The reporters will want to know how you plan to prosecute her.”

  “Why is that tricky? She stole a baby.”

  “You still don’t want to demonize her. There are plenty of women who can’t have children who can empathize with her situation.”

  “Don’t speak about her like she’s a criminal.”

  “Exactly. Tell them she’s a confused woman, and that police psychologists will be dealing with her. I wouldn’t mention the charges she’s facing, or that she might do hard time.”

  “What about her husband pulling the gun on us?”

  “I wouldn’t mention that, either.”

  “Keep it upbeat, huh?”

  “Happy time,” I said.

  I pulled into the hospital’s emergency entrance in the back of the building, and threw the Mustang into park. Getting out, I walked around and opened Burrell’s door. She smiled at me with her eyes as she climbed out with the baby.

  “One more thing,” I said.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  Burrell’s detective’s badge was still clipped to her purse. I removed it, shined it on my sleeve, then pinned it on her chest so it was in plain sight.

  “Just so everyone knows who’s in charge,” I said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  I parked and went inside the hospital. There was a pharmacy on the first floor, and I strapped myself into the free blood pressure machine to check my blood pressure and pulse. I’d had guns pointed in my face before, and I knew how it affected me.

  My blood pressure and pulse were both sky high. I went to my car, popped James Taylor’s greatest hits into my tape deck, and started petting my dog. After a while, I started to feel better. Then my cell phone rang.

  “I just wrapped up my news conference,” Burrell said. “You should come inside. The Wakefields want to thank you.”

  “Tell them I’ll take a rain check,” I said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s another little boy who needs to be rescued.”

  “I’ll be out in five minutes.”

  I drove Burrell to the Village Inn to retrieve my car, and neither of us spoke a word. Then I followed her to police department headquarters on Andrews Avenue. Finding a parking space, I rolled down the windows for my dog.

  “I’ve had every detective from Missing Persons tracking down the Armwood hotels in Fort Lauderdale,” Burrell said as we crossed the lot. “I didn’t forget our deal.”

  “I know you didn’t,” I said.

  Burrell had me cleared at the reception desk, and we headed upstairs to the War Room on the top floor. The War Room was used as a communications center during emergencies like hurricanes and wildfires, and was outfitted with a bank of telephones and a wall of high-resolution TVs. It also had a panoramic view of the county. Although the building was smoke-free, people still occasionally smoked in the War Room, and a recent cigarette lingered in the air as we entered. Standing around an oval table were the six detectives from my old unit.

  “Good afternoon,” Burrell said.

  They broke out of their huddle. A detective named Tom Manning was holding a remote. He pressed a button, and on every TV appeared a clip of Burrell from the news conference. The detectives broke into applause.

  “Thank you very much,” Burrell said. “Now, I’d like to hear what progress you’ve made tracking down Armwood hotels.”

  A sunburned detective named Bob Smith stepped forward. Smith was the first detective I’d ever hired, and he kne
w how to get things done. He pointed at the map of south Florida spread across the oval table. The map was covered in red thumbtacks, and there were a lot of them.

  “We were in the process of identifying all the Armwood Guest Suite Hotels in south Florida when you walked in,” he said.

  “How many have you found?” I asked.

  “Ninety,” Smith replied.

  The number gave me pause. Tim Small had indicated there were forty Armwood hotels in south Florida. Searching forty hotels for a kidnapped child was manageable; searching ninety wasn’t.

  “I was told there were less,” I said.

  “It’s an inflated number,” Smith said.

  “What do you mean, inflated?” Burrell asked.

  “At one time, Armwood owned forty hotels in south Florida,” Smith explained. “Then their parent company bought another chain of hotels called Leisure Inns, which were quite big. When Armwood got sold, the Armwood properties and Leisure Inns were listed on the bill of sale under the Armwood name. We’re working off the bill of sale, because it’s the only record we could find.”

  “So fifty of those thumbtacks are Leisure Inns, only you have no way of knowing which ones,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Smith said.

  I turned to Burrell. “Can we search all of them?”

  “We’ll have to,” she said.

  “There’s another problem,” Smith said.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Many of these hotels are welfare houses and crack dens, and are dangerous places,” Smith said. “We’re going to need a small army to properly search them.”

  “Define small army,” I said.

  “If we’re going to conduct the searches at the same time, which is the best way to go, we’ll need a few hundred people at least,” Smith replied.

  “Do we have that kind of manpower available?” I asked Burrell.

  “Let me find out,” she said.

  While Burrell made some calls, I talked with the detectives from my old unit. I’d had little contact with them since leaving the force. The case that had cost me my job had cast a dark cloud over Missing Persons, and I hadn’t wanted to hurt their careers by staying in touch. But I still cared about them, and always would.

  Burrell hung up the phone and came over to where we stood.

  “No go,” she said. “Every available cop is searching for Jed Grimes.”

  “What about FBI or FDLE agents?” I asked.

  “They’re looking for Jed, too,” she said.

  It was rare for three different law enforcement agencies to search for a single suspect, and I suspected that Special Agent Whitley had convinced them that Jed was responsible for the bodies in the landfill. Cops worked on priorities, and right now, finding Sampson wasn’t as urgent as finding his father.

  Except to me.

  I studied the map. The two men who were holding Sampson hostage were known drug enforcers. That made it likely that they would use a crack den as their hideout.

  “Which of these hotels are crack dens?” I asked.

  Smith pointed out the known crack dens. Lonnie Lowman had said that Sampson was being kept in Fort Lauderdale, so I removed all the thumbtacks on the map except for the known crack dens in Broward. There were seven.

  “Sampson is being held in one of these locations,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” Burrell asked.

  “Positive. The eight of us should be able to find him.”

  Burrell looked at the map, then shook her head. “We need to know which hotel Sampson is in. If we raid one, and he’s not there, the drug dealers will get on their cell phones, and alert their friends. We could end up getting ambushed if we’re not careful.”

  “What are you suggesting?” I asked.

  “We wait until we have more people, then raid them all at once,” Burrell said.

  “How long will that be?”

  “I wish I could tell you, Jack.”

  I tried to imagine Sampson Grimes living in a crack den. The kid was a survivor, but I didn’t see him lasting forever in an environment like that. No one could.

  I kicked a trash can across the War Room on my way out the door.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  B ack when I was a cop, I’d often go home after a bad day, and lie on the couch in the living room with my head resting in my wife’s lap. Sometimes I’d listen to music on the stereo, but more often than not, I’d let the silence of my house calm me, while Rose gently ran her fingers through my hair.

  These days, I didn’t have a house to escape to, and Rose was living three hundred miles away, so I settled for sitting at the Sunset’s bar with the Seven Dwarfs. My mind had latched onto the image of Sampson Grimes being held in a crack den, and wouldn’t let it go. I crushed my empty beer can against the bar.

  “You doing okay?” Sonny asked.

  “I’ve had better days,” I admitted.

  “Can I do anything?”

  “Tell me some good news.”

  “A new guy came in last night and started buying drinks, and became everyone’s new best friend. I think he’s going to become a regular.”

  The Sunset operated on a shoestring budget, which was largely paid for by the drinking habits of the Seven Dwarfs. A new regular was a cause for celebration.

  “Is he suitable for Dwarfdom?” I asked.

  “I think so. Check him out. He’s over there on the last stool.”

  I followed Sonny’s eyes down the bar. Sitting on the last stool was an old, unshaven man with watery eyes and a drinker’s nose, what locals call a salty dog. He wore a long-sleeved denim shirt with the right sleeve tucked into his pants pocket.

  “No right arm?” I asked.

  “Says he lost it in a car accident,” Sonny said. “His name is Mitch, but he goes by Lefty. He’s a good guy, until he starts singing. Then he gets pretty unbearable.”

  I ordered dinner. Sonny served me a bowl of the house chili, and I took a table overlooking the ocean, and ate while watching waves slap the pilings that held up the bar. In their pale reflection I could see the daylight slowly fading, and the blackness of night meet the blackness that lay below. Looking into the water’s depths, I felt a twisting in my gut. For every hour that passed, the chances of Sampson being rescued grew slimmer. I couldn’t just sit here and wait for the police to act. I had to do something.

  I removed the photo that I’d printed off Tim Small’s computer, and laid it on the table. In the photo, Sampson was sitting in a dog crate. It occurred to me that of all the child abduction cases I’d worked, I couldn’t remember anyone putting a kid in a dog crate. I wondered what Sampson had done to make the men holding him do this.

  An ugly sound broke my concentration. Turning around in my chair, I saw Lefty standing in the middle of the room, belting out a drunken ballad. He sounded like a cat being strangled.

  “Hey,” I called out.

  Lefty stopped singing. “What’s your problem, mate?”

  “I think it’s your voice,” I said.

  “Don’t you like music?”

  “That’s not music.”

  The Dwarfs hooted and hollered. Lefty glared at me.

  “Can you do better?” Lefty asked.

  I couldn’t sing worth a damn. But if I didn’t respond, Lefty was going to think he’d won, and go back to torturing me. Then I remembered the jukebox sitting in the trunk of my car.

  “Give me a minute, and I’ll let you hear what real music sounds like,” I said.

  “Sure you will,” Lefty said.

  With Sonny’s help, I mounted the jukebox onto a wall in the bar, and plugged it in. As colored neon flowed magically through the glass tubes, the Dwarfs crowded around me, oohing and awwing like a bunch of dumbstruck kids.

  “Play something,” one of them said.

  The playlist contained dozens of classic rock ’n’ roll songs. I dropped a dime into the machine, and Elvis Presley’s “Don’t Be Cruel” filled the bar. The Dwarfs danc
ed in place and clapped their hands. I returned to my chair, and Sonny served me a cold beer.

  “You made Lefty’s day,” Sonny said.

  I glanced across the bar. Lefty was dancing by his stool, and having more fun than anyone in the room. His voice didn’t sound nearly as bad singing backup, and he winked at me as he belted out the lyrics.

  You know I can be found,

  Sitting home all alone,

  If you can’t come around,

  At least please telephone.

  Don’t be cruel to a heart that’s true.

  An alarm went off inside my head. I lowered my drink to the table, and picked up the photograph of Sampson. For a long moment, I simply stared at it.

  Sampson was being held in a hotel room with a telephone jack, but no telephone. He was also being kept in a dog crate. The two things hadn’t seemed connected, but now I realized that they were. Sampson had used the phone in the hotel room to call 911, only the drug enforcers had caught him. Fearful that he’d try again, they’d taken the phone out of the room, and stuck him in a dog crate. The kid had nearly rescued himself.

  The song ended, and Lefty came over to where I sat.

  “Still don’t like my singing?” he asked.

  I stood up and hugged the old drunk.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  Standing in the parking lot beside the bar, I called Burrell on my cell. My heart was beating so fast I could hear a bass line in my ears. With a little help from Burrell, I was going to find Sampson. Her voice mail picked up. I left a message saying it was urgent, and asked her to call me back.

  I waited a few minutes, and called again. Still no answer. I scrolled through the address book of my cell, and discovered I didn’t have her home number.

  The stairs groaned as I ran upstairs to my rented room. From my closet I removed the cardboard box containing the crap from my police department days, and dumped it on the bed, praying my address book hadn’t gotten lost. My address book contained the phone numbers of every cop I’d ever worked with. Work numbers, cell numbers, and home numbers. The home phone numbers were all unlisted. Finding Burrell’s, I punched it into my cell, and heard the call go through.