Six Seconds

by Rick Mofina

  Sharmay called her at the bookstore, identified herself, then said, “We believe one of our Guardians may have located your son, Logan Conlin.”

  Stunned into silence, Maggie gripped the phone. “Hello? Maggie?”

  “My God, do you have him? Where is he? Is he okay? I have to see him!”

  “We don’t have him yet. We’d prefer to discuss details at our Los Angeles office. Please come as soon as it’s convenient so we can advance the case.” An hour later, after following Sharmay’s directions,

  Maggie had parked her car on a street that bordered

  Culver City and West L.A.

  The society’s L.A. chapter was in a second-story office above the Flying Emerald Dragon takeout restau rant. The aroma of deep-fried chicken and stir-fried veg etables filled it now as Maggie sat before the video monitor.

  “Here we go. Fixed it,” Rimmer said. “This footage comes to us from our New York chapter from Wayne

  Kraychinski, retired NYPD detective first grade.” As the Rimmers had explained it, Kraychinski checked Logan’s profile with his school sources, as he does with all the cases his chapter takes on.

  Kraychinski got a lead in Queens concerning a boy fitting Logan’s age and description. According to the history, the boy had recently moved to the community with his father, a trucker, who fit Jake Conlin’s general profile.

  Six Seconds.

  Kraychinski and some of the other Guardians initi ated surveillance.

  “We’ve got a series of sequences recorded over a few weeks,” Rimmer said.

  The camera shook and a boy about eight to ten years old in a hooded sweatshirt swam into view but not in sharp focus. Maggie couldn’t see his face clearly, or his full body and gait. The boy was among a group walking through a schoolyard to a basketball court.

  “Now, this is where they reside.”

  The video jumped to a row of tired-looking twostory detached homes shoehorned into a Queens neigh borhood. One house had a rig out front. No trailer. A green Peterbilt. Being married to a trucker, Maggie knew vehicles. Jake drove a Kenworth but he could’ve sold it or traded it for a Peterbilt.

  Next, the boy was in a park with other kids on skateboards.

  Again, his back was to the camera. He was wearing a ball cap and was sitting on the grass bordering the skating area. Maggie caught her breath as he turned to offer his profile, but a shadow blocked the image before it disappeared.

  Maggie covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a groan.

  Is it Logan? She couldn’t be certain.

  “Now,” Rimmer said, “this next sequence, which is the money sequence, was obtained by Kraychinski’s friend, Ella Bell. She’s a former Customs officer. Ella used a minicamera hidden in her hat to employ a ruse for interaction.”

  The camera was shaky as it came upon a group of boys at a park bench in a playground. The audio offered a woman’s voice that carried a touch of Long Island. The speaker was unseen as the camera closed in on the group.

  “Excuse me, guys, could you help me? I’m lost and could use some help here.”

  A map was unfolded on the bench.

  “I’m looking for the Vander Building. Anybody know where that is?”

  The boys huddled around the map and faces bobbed in and out of view. The camera pulled close on a boy about ten with a ball cap.

  “This is it,” Rimmer said. “Watch.”

  “Nice hat,” the woman said. “You like the Yankees?”

  “Yeah.”

  The cap’s brim cast the boy’s face in shadow.

  “You’re not from around here,” the woman said. “Where’re you from?”

  “He’s new here from Ohio,” another kid answered. “Yo-hi-yo.”

  “That right?”

  The boy’s face is clear now, filling the screen as he nods.

  “The Vander Building’s that way.” Another boy pointed. The images blurred for Maggie as her heart sank and tears rolled down her face.

  “It’s not him.”

  “Are you sure?” Rimmer asked. “Because sometimes the abducting parent will change the hairstyle and color.”

  “That boy is not my son!”

  “Stop the video, Ned.” Sharmay began rubbing Maggie’s shoulders. “You’re going to be okay, honey.”

  “I’m sorry I yelled. That’s not Logan. I’m sorry. Please thank everybody for me. I’m sorry.” Maggie col lected her bag and headed to the door.

  “We’ll keep looking,” Sharmay called to her back. “You’re going to see him again, I just know it.”

  Night was falling.

  Maggie was losing a battle with her emotions as she hurried to her car.

  How could she have been so stupid? How could she let her hopes get so high?

  She pulled her keys from her bag and fumbled them. They chimed against the pavement. As she retrieved them, she glanced to the end of the street.

  Although it didn’t fully register, Maggie glimpsed a man near the end of the block who’d been sitting in his car reading a newspaper.

  As Maggie got behind the wheel of her car, he put the paper aside, sat upright then turned his ignition. When she left her parking space, the man behind her pulled out of his.

  He stayed several car lengths back in a blue Impala with tinted windows. His lower front bumper was scraped on the driver’s side.

  Maggie had noticed him as she checked her rearview mirror, but didn’t give it much thought as she headed for the freeway. She had other things to contend with.

  Traffic was heavy.

  The radio news reported that a wreck was choking flow on the San Bernardino Freeway, so she took the 60, her pulse still racing over what had happened with the Guardians. It hammered home the reality that she may never see Logan again.

  No. Please. No. She wouldn’t survive. Jake, where are you? Please tell me.

  Maggie brushed away her tears and focused on the slow-moving streams of red taillights and Sharmay’s parting words, replaying like a prayer.

  “You’re going to see him again, I just know it.”

  Maggie needed to believe that.

  She had to.

  By the time she reached her exit some ninety minutes later, her anguish had evolved into exhaustion. As she made her way through Blue Rose Creek, she saw that her tank was nearly dry. She turned into the big twentyfour-hour Chevron that she liked.

  It was clean and well lit.

  Safe for a woman alone at night.

  After filling up and swiping her card at the pump, Maggie stopped dead.

  That’s weird.

  A blue Impala with tinted windows and a bumper damaged on the driver’s side was in a far corner of the station’s large lot.

  Was that the same car she’d seen behind her in Culver City?

  Couldn’t be. She was being silly. Or tired. Or both. Chalk it up to a bad day, she told herself after she started her car and pulled out of the station.

  A moment later, as she waited at an intersection for the light to change, she thought about taking a hot bath to soothe her nerves when she got home. Then in her side mirror, she noticed that a blue Impala had eased into her lane, two cars back from her.

  What the heck?

  The light turned green and Maggie quickly changed her turn signal indicator and turned right instead of left, keeping her eye on her mirror.

  The Impala turned right.

  She was being followed!

  Stop it, she told herself. You’re not being followed.

  It’s probably nothing. Probably a coincidence. To prove it, she turned left at the very next street.

  She checked her mirror.

  The Impala turned left.

  Gooseflesh rose on Maggie’s arms as scenarios played in her mind. She pushed on the accelerator. She didn’t know this neighborhood and took the next right, glimpsing the Impala behind her, turning right.

  Maggie pressed the pedal down farther and began searching the dark houses along the quiet streets, help less, no
t knowing what to do, eyes locked on her mirror.

  As she came to a stretch where the street coiled, Maggie turned quickly into an empty driveway and her car disappeared into a darkened, empty carport.

  She killed her motor, her lights and took her foot off the brake.

  She slid down in her seat and peeked from her car to the street, watching the Impala roar by, its taillights dis appearing into the night.

  Maggie sat up and rested her head on her headrest. She gulped air and took several deep breaths as she sat motionless, wondering what the hell had happened.

  Had she been followed? Should she tell police? She imagined how that would go.

  Ah, yes, the crazy lady again. How can we help you? 116 Rick Mofina

  What was it? Carjackers? Teenagers? The imaginings of a distressed woman?

  Maggie concentrated on her watch. It calmed her. After fifteen minutes passed, she started her car and drove to her house.

  No sign of the Impala.

  She sighed.

  As she unlocked her door and entered her home, she was numb.

  Sleep.

  Forget the bath.

  Go to sleep.

  But she noticed the red light was blinking on her an swering machine.

  One message.

  She pressed Play.

  The tape beeped as it cued the message. Maggie rec ognized that voice.

  “This is Helga, Madame Fatima’s friend. Madame has instructed me to tell you that she has information about your son. Information you should have.”

  Book Two

  Blood Revenge

  18

  Cold Butte, Lone Tree County, Montana

  Father Andrew Stone watched the wind-groomed grass undulate across the Great Plains, mile after mile until the earth touched the sky.

  Breathtaking in its majesty.

  Immortal for its painful history.

  So deserving of what was to come.

  Soon the pope would arrive here and consecrate this very ground, the Buffalo Breaks, where so many of

  Stone’s ancestors had died.

  His heart swelled at a dream come true.

  But last-minute concerns were risking cancellation of the papal visit, the first ever to this corner of the country. Stone wasn’t worried.

  For if there was one thing he’d learned from an old friend, it was that God’s plan was unstoppable. “Father Stone! We’re ready to start!”

  Nearly a hundred yards back, the principal of Cold

  Butte’s only school was calling him to the Papal Visit Planning Committee’s meeting on the letter from Washington.

  Stone had read it.

  The Secret Service had alerted the Vatican to the latest security and foreign intelligence-more inter cepted chatter about threats and potential attacks. Un related to the letter, the Washington Post had recently reported that a growing number of influential U.S. church organizations, fearing an attempted assassina tion, were privately urging the Vatican to cut venues in the papal visit, including the one planned right here in Lone Tree County.

  Gripping his copy of the letter and the Post story he’d stapled to it, Stone started for the school, certain that the visit would ultimately take place. His faith was anchored by his devotion to God and his blood ties to the land where he was born.

  Stone was descended from the Swift Fox, a small Plains tribe nearly wiped out by smallpox in the 1880s. At that time, Sister Beatrice Drapeau, a nun from France, had arrived with Jesuits and stayed to minister to the dying until she died of the illness.

  The sick who prayed to her memory survived.

  Her story inspired Stone to become a priest. After his divinity studies and ordination he was posted to the Vatican, working among the archives on the church’s role in Native American history. There, he befriended a wise cardinal who was taken by Stone’s call to God and the nun’s legacy.

  “Sister Beatrice’s sacrifice must not be forgotten.” The cardinal raised one finger to Stone before he returned to Lone Tree County. “One day, my brother, I will make a pilgrimage to Montana to honor her.”

  Years later, to Stone’s awe, the cardinal was elected pope. A few months afterward, Stone’s old friend, the new pope, wrote him a personal letter.

  “My brother, to remember our Good Sister, I will, as promised, make a pilgrimage to the Great Plains on the next anniversary of her death. You may pass this news to others so that they may join in the celebration.”

  Stone kept the note private but went online to share the news and the date of the pope’s upcoming visit to Montana.

  Unlike presidential visits, news of papal visits was often made public in advance because of the scale and preparations involved. But Stone’s revelation had long preceded the Vatican’s expected official announcement of a multicity papal visit to the United States. This frus trated the U.S. Secret Service because it gave ample lead time to anyone planning an attack.

  Now, as Stone entered the school and took his place at the meeting, he braced for a heated debate on any lastditch effort to cancel the pope’s visit to Montana.

  “The very thought of canceling at this stage is a pre posterous notion,” said the reverend from the office of the Bishop for the Diocese of Great Falls-Billings.

  “Absolutely,” the woman from the governor’s office agreed. “We’re down to a few short weeks from the event.”

  “As the letter states, U.S. and foreign intelligence have been picking up chatter about threats and poten tial attacks,” a Secret Service official said through the speakerphone from Washington. “Granted, it’s not un common, but the volume has markedly increased and gives us concern. Especially since various plots against several world leaders and several other targets have

  122 Rick Mofina been thwarted in the past sixteen months. The Secret Service is in no way advising the Vatican to cancel any events. Our role is to provide the intelligence for the Vatican to make any decision.”

  “These groups quoted in the Post want a shortened tour and suggested the visit to Lone Tree be dropped,” the reverend from the Diocese of Great Falls-Billings said.

  “That’s got nothing to do with the Secret Service,” the agent said.

  “We’re aware these are challenging times, but to cancel any venue at this stage is contrary to the intent of the Holy Father’s pastoral mission to the U.S.,” the priest representing the Holy See’s Secretariat of State said from Washington. “Each location plays a key role in the pontiff’s ecumenical work.”

  In Montana, the day of celebration would involve a presentation to the pope at the school by the children’s choir before he celebrated an open-air Mass in Buffalo Breaks for about one hundred thousand people. There he would bless the site and acknowledge that God allows people to rise above failings to ensure the spirit is not extinguished.

  “Has anyone considered the fallout of canceling the first papal visit in the state’s history?” the principal asked. “Think of what’s been done, accommodating charter groups, arranging motel rooms from Great Falls to Billings, Lewistown, Miles City, even into North Dakota. The cost, the expectations created. Not to mention all the security and background checks everyone has already undergone. And the choir. Goodness, the children have been working so hard for months,” the principal said.

  As Stone followed the nods that went round the table, he detached himself from the discussion.

  “At this stage, the decision is not ours,” the Secret Service official said.

  “That is correct,” the official from the Holy See said. “We must await the Vatican’s final decision.”

  19

  Cold Butte, Lone Tree County, Montana

  Logan’s face turned red.

  Everyone stopped to stare at him.

  You could have heard a pin drop on the floor of the gym where fifty students from all grades had been as sembled into the children’s choir that would perform for the pope’s upcoming visit.

  Sobil Mounce-Bazley, the choir director, tapped her baton o
n her podium. All voices hushed. Music sheets rustled, someone coughed but no one dared speak. In the silence, Sobil ran a finger down her list until she came to the offender.

  Number 27. Alto. Age nine.

  “Logan Russell?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were out of time. You threw off the entire group, Mr. Russell.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Steel-blue eyes peered over bifocals at Logan and held him for an icy moment.

  Someone coughed. A snicker was stifled. “Logan Russell, you will see me after practice.” The spinster Sobil Mounce-Bazley was a legendary music director, having led children’s choirs in London and New York until she retired to her brother’s ranch near Cold Butte. When word spread of the historic papal visit, she accepted the school’s invitation to form and lead the choir that would sing for the Holy Father.

  Music had been her life, perfection her standard. But things weren’t going well today. Number 27, the lovely alto, was straining her patience.

  “You want to tell me what your problem is, Mr. Russell?” she asked Logan after everyone had left.

  He didn’t answer.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard it said ad nauseam that to sing for the pope is a once-in-a-lifetime oppportunity.”

  “I miss my mom.”

  “Where is she?”

  “In California. My mom and dad kinda split up and I moved here with my dad and his new girlfriend.”

  “That might be tough, but it’s no excuse for rude ness.”

  During her time in London and New York, Sobil had directed children who’d had parents murdered, baby brothers or sisters who’d been sold by crack-addicted relatives. Acting out over a divorce was not high on her sympathy scale.

  “I won’t pry. I’ll cut you some slack. Mind your manners. Memorize the songs, practice the tempo. If you don’t improve by the end of the week, you’re off the team. Is that understood, Mr. Russell?”

  It was.

  On the school bus home, Logan leaned his forehead against the window and watched as cloud shadows floated over the eternal empty grassland.

  He’d never felt so alone. Tears filled his eyes.