Breaking Cover (Tony Wolf/Tim Buckthorn)

by J. D. Rhoades

  Sanders crossed the room and stood over the man. He felt his heart pounding. His breath came in ragged gasps as he held the gun on the unmoving figure. After a long moment, he turned to the boy on the floor.

  It was the older one; he couldn’t remember if it was Evan or Earl. The kid looked up at Sanders. His eyes were wide above the duct tape wound around his head. Sanders bent down. “This may hurt a little,” he said as he started looking for the end of the tape to rip it off. The boy lay terrified, unmoving. Sanders located the end and started to pull. It looked like the kidnapper had used almost an entire roll of tape on the boy’s head alone. Sanders saw the knife lying a few feet away. He decided to try to cut through the tape. He bent over, put down the gun, and picked up the knife. The boy screamed behind the tape and tried to squirm away.

  “Easy, kid,” he said. “Take it easy. I’m not going to hurt you.” The boy was beyond reassurance. He arched and bucked so violently that Sanders was afraid he’d hurt himself. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Look, I’m putting it down, okay?” He dropped the knife back to the floor. The boy quieted slightly.

  “Jesus,’ ” Sanders said under his breath. He looked over at the other bound figure. The kid’s eyes were open, but they stared straight ahead, unseeing. Sanders went over and knelt down. He could see the rapid rise and fall of the small chest. The boy was alive, but out of it. Sanders hesitated for a moment, wondering what to do next. He bent down and started unwinding the tape from around the younger kid’s head. It took some time, and the boy quivered slightly every time the tape took out a clump of hair. “Sorry,” Sanders muttered whenever that happened. “Sorry. Sorry.” Finally, he pulled the last strip off the kid’s mouth. He still hadn’t moved. Sanders pulled the tape from his hands, then his ankles. The boy immediately curled up in a ball against the wall, his arms wrapped around his knees, not looking at Sanders, not looking at anything. Sanders turned back to the first kid. “Okay,” he said. “That took a while, and I need to get out of here pretty soon. You can see I’m not here to hurt you. I can use the knife to cut you loose, or you can wait for your brother to snap out of it and unwrap you.” He picked up the knife and raised his eyebrows questioningly. The older boy hesitated, then nodded. It took Sanders only a minute or so to cut him loose. The boy immediately crawled to his brother. “Earl,” the boy whispered. “Earl, come on, talk to me.” Earl didn’t respond.

  “Come on,” Sanders said. “Let’s get outside.”

  The older kid—it had to be Evan—looked up. “Are you a policeman?”

  “No,” Sanders said.

  He walked over to them. “Come on, let’s get him outside. It stinks in here.” He helped Evan get the unresisting Earl to his feet. They started walking him outside. Evan swallowed as he looked at the body on the floor.

  “You shot the bad guy,” Evan said. “Doesn’t that make you the good guy?”

  “Not exactly,” Sanders said. “It’s . . . kind of complicated.” They guided Earl down the stairs. Evan blinked in the sudden light. Earl still didn’t respond.

  Evan looked at Sanders. “That guy,” he said in a whisper. “That bad guy . . . he hurt my brother. He hurt him real bad.” A single tear rolled down his cheek. “I tried to stop him, but . . . but I was too little . . .” His lip started quivering.

  Sanders knelt down to look him in the eye. “Kid,” he said. “Evan. Look at me, man.” The kid’s lip stopped quivering.

  “Evan,” Sanders said. “It’s real important that no one knows I was here. You can’t tell anybody about me.”

  Evan’s look of despair turned to confusion. “Why?” he said. “You saved us. You shot the bad guy.”

  Sanders nodded. “Right. So you guys owe me, right? I did you a favor, you do me one, okay? Even Steven.”

  The invocation of the magic words of childhood justice got through to Evan. He nodded. Then his brow furrowed. “How are we going to get home?” he whispered. His lip started to quiver again.

  “Shit,” Sanders muttered as he stood up. He hadn’t planned ahead. He walked over to the van and pulled the passenger side door open. The floor was littered with fast food wrappers and empty plastic bottles. There was a hole in the dash where somebody had pulled out the radio. Sanders finally located what he’d been looking for. He reached over and picked up a small black cell phone from the dash. It was one of the cheap models typically given out for free to people who signed a one-year contract for cellular service. He handed the phone to Evan. “You know how to use one of these?” Evan looked dubious. Sanders flipped the phone open. It was on, the indicator light showing a good signal. “Look, just dial 911. You know how to do that, right? Then hit this send button. When someone comes on the line, tell them that you’re on Sutter Church Road. Can you remember that?”

  “Summer . . .” Evan began.

  “Sutter,” Sanders corrected him. “Sutter Church Road. I don’t know the number, but tell them about the trailer here. Somebody’ll figure it out.”

  Evan looked alarmed. “Where are you going to be? You’re not going to leave us!”

  “It’ll only be for a short time, kid,” Sanders said. He started backing down the road toward the woods where his truck was hidden. “Go ahead,” he called out. “Make the call. Your brother needs a doctor. And remember, I was never here.” He saw the kid start to dial. Sanders turned and bolted down the road toward his truck.

  GABY!” HOWARD Jessup’s deep bass voice cut through the din of the newsroom like a foghorn. “The cops just got the guy that took those two boys!”

  Gabriella Torrijos sprang from her desk, nearly spilling her coffee in the process. She crossed the room to the cubicle where her videographer was holding a phone to his ear. “Sounds like he tried to shoot it out with the cops,” Howard said, scribbling furiously on a notepad. “The guy’s dead.”

  “Where?” “Pine Lake.”

  Gabriella checked the map tacked to the wall over the scanner. The map showed the entire area reached by the WRHO-TV transmitters, with the station’s ADI (area of dominant influence) outlined with a heavy black border.

  “Right,” she said. “Thirty miles south. On 43.” “Yep,” Howard said. “Home of the Bass Festival.”

  Gaby pulled on her suit jacket. “I didn’t know you fished.”

  “I don’t,” Howard said. “Bob’s been the grand marshal last couple years.” Gaby grimaced at the mention of Bob Caulfield, WRHO’s chief anchor. “Be nice, girl,” Howard said, a grin on his craggy dark face. “Our Bob is a North Carolina institution. Beloved by all.”

  “Especially bartenders and nineteen-year-old interns.”

  “Mee-yow, baby,” Howard said.

  Michael Ellis, Channel 12’s news producer, came skidding around the corner of the cubicle. “Gaby—”

  “I’m already gone,” Gaby interrupted. Howard was grabbing his dark blue windbreaker with the WHRO logo stenciled on the back. “Get me a live feed set up so we can break in as soon as I

  find out what’s going on. Any word on the kids?”

  “Yeah,” said Howard, “sounds like they’re all right—” “Walk and talk, Howard. Walk and talk . . .”

  By the time they got to the parking lot and the waiting news van, Gaby was puffing from trying to keep up with Howard’s longlimbed strides.

  “Who called it in?” Gaby said as she climbed into the van. Howard turned the key and stomped the gas as soon as her door slammed shut, the acceleration momentarily pressing her back into the seat. He spun the wheel one-handed, slewing the van around a car entering the station’s parking lot. “Brian knows some dispatcher down at the county EMS office. They’ve lit up the switchboards for three counties. Everyone wants in on this.”

  “I’ll bet,” Gaby said. Then Howard’s words sank in. “Wait a minute,” she said. “It was one of Brian’s sources that called?”

  “Come on, come on,” Howard muttered in the direction of a vehicle at an intersection ahead that was slow pulling away as the light turned green
. “Why all you white people drive so got-damn slow?”

  “Howard,” Gaby repeated. “Answer me. Was it a source of Brian’s who called?”

  Howard refused to look at her. “They called the station, Gaby,” he said. “You were there.”

  “Brian’s the senior correspondent,” Gaby said. “This is a big story. He’s not going to be happy about this.”

  Howard shrugged. “You do a good job on this, girl, ain’t nobody going to care if Brian’s happy or not.”

  She looked at him for a long moment. “Thanks, Howard,” she said.

  Howard whipped into a right-turn-only lane to pass a line of slow-moving cars, then yanked the van back into the travel lane. Horns honked. “Don’t thank me,” he said. “I ain’t the assignment editor. You were there, that’s all.” He gave her a quick grin. “You’re always there.”

  “I was wondering if anyone noticed,” she said.

  “I do,” Howard said. “Michael does. Pretty soon so will everyone else.”

  They hit the off ramp at fifty miles an hour, then swung onto 43. Soon the parade of shopping centers and gated subdivisions began to thin out, replaced by older homes set farther back from the road, then by farmland. Howard picked up speed as the traffic thinned out. When they got closer to the town of Pine Lake, Gaby turned on the police scanner. The red LEDs had barely begun their rapid back-and-forth pulse before the speaker crackled to life. Out of the static and garbled chatter, Gaby picked out the name of a road. She reached behind the seat and pulled out a plastic shopping bag, crammed full of clumsily folded county maps. She rustled through them until she located the one she wanted, grimacing at the creases and coffee stains. “Jesus,” she muttered. “What is the deal with men and folding maps?”

  “Sexist,” Howard said.

  “Here it is,” Gaby said, stabbing her finger down onto the map. “Sutter Church Road. There’s an exit for Pine Lake, then a right about three miles down. That’s Sutter Church. That’s where they are.”

  The scanner crackled and squawked. It did sound like every lawman and rescue worker for miles was converging on Sutter Church Road. As Howard took the exit for Pine Lake, a green and white ambulance rocketed past in an explosion of flashing lights and blaring sirens. Howard fell in behind it and pressed the gas pedal to the floor.

  They saw the lights from almost a mile away on the flat, straight road. It looked like a carnival midway seen from a distance, with red, blue, and white lights strobing chaotically on both sides of the road. A wild hodgepodge of vehicles lined the shoulder: sheriff ’s cars, black and silver Highway Patrol cars, town cops, EMS, even a fire truck. A few civilian vehicles, mostly

  4 × 4 pickups, sported flashers on their dashboards. A hard-faced highway patrolman in a uniform that matched the colors of his car motioned them to a stop.

  “No press,” he barked.

  Gaby leaned over and gave him her best professional smile. “Officer,” she said, “I’m Gabriella Torrijos from WRHO NewsNow.”

  He wasn’t buying the smile. “No press,” he repeated. “Keep moving, please.”

  “Yowsa, boss,” Howard said. The highway patrolman gave him a hard look, but Howard was already moving.

  “What are you doing?” Gaby hissed.

  Howard pointed ahead. Gaby looked. A pickup was pulling out, leaving a space open on the side of the road. “Don’t want to lose our parking space.” Gaby looked nervously in the rearview mirror for the highway patrolman, but he had apparently dismissed them from his thoughts and was busily directing traffic with abrupt hand motions.

  Howard and Gaby piled out of the news van almost before it had stopped moving. Howard yanked open the side of the van and flicked a switch. There was a grinding of motors as the white pole of the microwave antenna raised out of its holder on the side of the truck. Howard yanked his camera out and began settling it on his shoulder as Gaby hooked up her microphone. The highway patrolman noticed then and began approaching, waving his arms angrily.

  “Howard . . .” Gaby said.

  “Don’t worry, girl,” Howard murmured back. “These days, the cops’re almost as scared of a black man with a video camera as they are of one with a gun. I’m thinkin’ of carryin’ one everywhere I go.” The antenna rose to its full height and began unfolding.

  “I thought I told you—” the red-faced patrolman began. Gaby turned to the officer, still holding the mike. “Officer,” she said, “can you tell us what’s going on?”

  The patrolman stopped dead in his tracks. “Ma’am,” he said, “you can’t be here.”

  She ignored him. “Is it true the police have a suspect in custody in the kidnapping of Evan and Earl Powell?”

  He snapped to attention. “Ma’am,” he said in an official voice, “we’re not able to make any comment at this time.” He turned on his heel and walked away.

  “The power of television,” Howard said.

  Gaby laughed. “He’s just gone to find somebody with enough juice to make us go away.”

  “We better finish setting up, then,” Howard said.

  They were set up within five minutes, in communication with the newsroom via the microwave relay towering above the van. Both Howard and Gaby were linked with the control room by tiny earpieces.

  “Gaby?” a calm female voice came through her earpiece. Some of the tension went out of Gaby’s shoulders as she recognized the speaker.

  “I’m here, Stella,” Gaby replied through the tiny mike attached to the earpiece. Stella Darby was one of the show’s best producers. Gaby had never heard her raise her voice, never seen her lose her cool, even during the most glitch-plagued broadcasts. Gaby sorely needed Stella’s granite steadiness right then.

  “Howard?” Stella asked.

  “Stellaaaaaaa!” Howard grinned at his own bad Brando imitation. He shouldered the camera and adjusted the focus on Gaby.

  “That joke gets funnier every time I hear it, Howard,” Stella said. “Okay. We got you loud and clear. We’re breaking into Seinfeld right after the commercial.”

  “Which episode?” Howard asked.

  “The one where you’re not funny anymore, Howard,” Stella said. “Okay, twenty seconds.”

  “Wait!” Gaby said, sudden panic washing over her. “I just got here! I don’t really know anything yet!”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Stella said. “We need to get something on the air. Just tell them there’s been a break in the case, that WHRO will be keeping you updated, blah blah blah, then pitch it back to Bob. Ten seconds.”

  Gaby took a deep breath and composed her face into the mask of the TV newsperson, professional, yet concerned.

  Stella started counting down. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . and go.”

  Gaby heard the familiar horns and kettledrums of the WRHO NewsNow theme and the prerecorded announcer informing listeners: “This is a Special Report from WRHO NewsNow, Where North Carolina Gets Its News First.” She heard Bob’s voice: “It appears there has been a dramatic development in the saga of Earl and Evan Powell, the two young boys kidnapped from their North Raleigh neighborhood five days ago. With more on the story, we go live to Gabriella Torrijos.”

  The red light on the front of Howard’s camera came on. “Bob, law enforcement officers converged today on this tree-lined road near the tiny town of Pine Lake, south of Raleigh. We don’t know a great deal yet, but we have heard from sources that the two kidnapped boys have been recovered and that they are both okay. We’ll be bringing you updates on this story as it develops. With the WRHO NewsNow team, I’m Gabriella Torrijos. Bob?”

  There was a short pause, then, “We’re clear,” Howard said. He shifted the camera slightly, peering at her from around the viewfinder. “Tiny town? What, they all dwarves or something?”

  “Oh, God,” she groaned. “Did that sound totally stupid?” “Naw,” Howard said. “But you ain’t gonna be winnin’ no awards from the local chamber of commerce.” He noticed the stricken look on Gaby’s face, and hi
s teasing grin turned to a look of contrition. “You did fine, girl,” he said. “Now let’s go get some actual information.” She gathered up a coil of the mike cord that linked her to the camera gear hung all over Howard. The two of them wove between the vehicles lining the side of the road toward what looked to be a break in the trees. Bright yellow police tape was strung across a dirt driveway. As they approached, there was a sudden commotion among the trees. A man in a dark green jumpsuit with an EMS patch on the shoulder lifted the tape. Two more appeared, carrying a stretcher. There was a body on the stretcher, covered with a blanket. Gaby pulled up short. “Howard . . .” She whispered.

  “I’m gettin’ it,” Howard’s tight voice came back. She stole a look at him. The red light was on. Even though they weren’t live, she knew, they were still connected. She prayed that the recorders back at the station were on and working properly. The EMS men didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry. They carried the draped body within a few feet of the camera, to the open doors of a waiting ambulance. They slid the stretcher into the back and closed the doors with a thud.

  “That’s a money shot, right there,” Howard murmured. “Gaby,” Stella said in her ear, “is that—”

  “I don’t know who it is,” Gaby whispered. “Go find out.”

  “On my way.” As Gaby turned, another man came out from under the police tape. He was dressed in a brown deputy sheriff ’s uniform. He noticed Gaby and the camera as he straightened up. Disgust rippled across his face. Then he sighed and began trudging toward them, running a hand through his thinning hair before replacing his Smokey Bear hat. By the time he reached Gaby and Howard, his professional mask was back in place. “Lieutenant Tim Buckthorn,” he said. “Gibson County Sheriff ’s Department. What can I do for you folks?”

  “Lieutenant Buckthorn, Gabriella Torrijos, WRHO News. Can you tell us, are the two Powell boys all right?”