Miscue

by Glen C. Allison

  Suddenly the beige van surged ahead.

  Forte swerved right to get around the Ford. The old man, finally seeing the black van behind him, pulled right to try and get out of the way.

  Forte jerked the wheel left at the same time the man did. The beige van was pulling away. The top of the bridge approached.

  Forte pulled all the way over to the left. He floored the accelerator. The outside mirror on his door was inches from the guard rail. He could feel the warning of the speed bumps under the tires.

  He was past the cars now. Eighty miles per hour. Eighty-five. The beige van had disappeared around the curve of the bridge. He was running for it.

  Not good, Forte thought.

  He increased speed. Ninety, ninety-five. He could see the van ahead but the kidnapper had put some space between them.

  He whooshed past three other cars and a truck on the right.

  The end of the bridge was closer now.

  Forte gripped the wheel and leaned forward.

  As the beige van zoomed off the bridge, it looked as if it would keep going straight on Highway 90 and bypass the downtown district.

  At the last second, it swerved off the exit ramp.

  Forte followed, feeling the centrifugal force pushing him against his door.

  The kidnapper skidded left, away from the downtown area. He straightened up and gunned the van ahead. Forte stayed close, gaining ground when the chase led around corners but falling behind slightly when the beige van surged forward in the straight-aways. Under its beat-up body, the kidnapper’s old van obviously had a super-charged engine.

  The chase screeched through a section of burned-out warehouse buildings and excavation sites. Piles of rubble and broken bricks lay between the charred remains of textile mills and warehouses where cotton bales long ago had waited their turn to be loaded on riverboats just blocks away.

  Ahead of the beige van, Forte could see a group of teenagers standing in the street, a block or two before the railroad tracks. A skinny boy shimmied to the sounds of the jambox on his shoulder. The beige van bore down on them. One of the girls nervously edged toward the curb. The boys just slouched and looked at the approaching van.

  The kidnapper kept going.

  At the last possible second, the teens dived out of the street.

  As Forte whooshed past them he saw the blurred glow of their cigarettes. He could hear a brief snatch of loud cursing and he was past them.

  The sounds of the teenagers’ voices were suddenly drowned out by the horn blast of a freight train.

  The train surged along the tracks at the end of the road two blocks ahead.

  The beige van barreled straight toward it.

  Just when it seemed he would ram the train, the kidnapper whipped right along an access road next to the tracks. For a frozen moment, it looked as if the beige van would tip over as it skidded, the right wheels off the ground. Finally it straightened up, landed back on all four wheels and sped along in the same direction the train was moving.

  Forte followed. He could see the locomotive a hundred yards ahead.

  He slammed the accelerator to the floor.

  The beige van was pulling even with the locomotive.

  Even through his closed window, Forte could hear the clatter of the train wheels just feet away.

  The beige van pulled ahead of the locomotive.

  Above the din, Forte heard Nomad’s voice next to him. “Oh, hell. The crazy bastard’s gonna try it!”

  Forte was dead-even with the train engine now.

  The beige van was thirty yards ahead of it.

  A crossing was ahead.

  The train whistle shrieked in Forte’s ear.

  Ahead of him, the beige van veered toward the crossing.

  It ramped upward and left the ground, sailing through the air over the tracks, the locomotive missing its back bumper by inches.

  The train whistle seemed angrier as the freight cars clattered away from the crossing.

  Forte skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust.

  Through the gaps in the passing train cars, he could see the beige van speeding away.

  He leaned back and rubbed his temples with his fingertips.

  Chapter 25

  Monday, 9:30 a.m.

  “Another beautiful spring day. Birds chirping, flowers blooming, you sitting here moping like a bump on a log.” Verna Griffey had brought a mug of coffee into the office. She set it on the desk and picked up an empty mug.

  Forte shifted in the desk chair where he reclined practically full length behind the desk. A New Orleans Saints cap rode low over his eyes. His arms were crossed and his legs were propped on the corner of the desk. A small television on the shelf in the corner was on with the volume turned down.

  All morning, a headache had pounded the inside of his skull. Back at the treatment center, they’d called it a dry hangover – when your body experienced the effects of a binge without actually having used drugs. A number of things could trigger it: lack of sleep, excessive stress, a traumatic event, an emotional high or low. Pick one of the above, Forte thought. He tilted his head back and opened his eyes. Verna was still standing there.

  “You okay?” she said.

  Forte pushed the cap above his eyes. He reached for the coffee cup.

  “Compared to what,” he said.

  “Bad night?” Verna asked.

  “Something like that.” He sipped the coffee and let out a long “Ahhhhhhh.” Nectar of the gods.

  Forte watched the TV screen. He could feel Verna’s attention on his face like a heat lamp.

  “You hear about that house blowing up over in Gretna?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, still looking at the television. “It was just on the news.”

  “But you know nothing about it,” she said.

  “The house blowing up?”

  “The house blowing up.”

  He looked directly at her now.

  Verna Griffey was one of the few people who could penetrate his emotional shield. After the death of his wife, Forte had built walls between himself and anyone who came close to wanting to help him. It had taken years to repair some of the relationships he had wrecked. Some of them were beyond fixing. The walls came down slowly.

  Verna and Archie were among the handful of people who had stuck with him, visiting him in treatment when he had earned the right to have visitors, calling him every few days to check his progress. Verna had taken care of his cat during his stay at the center, griping the whole time about the black hairs Boo left everywhere and the tomato plants he had dug up at her house.

  When Forte had decided to start his own security firm, Verna had been the one to set up his file system and had taken over most of the details of establishing the office. She did it without asking. “With the kids grown up, I’d go crazy laying around that house listening to Archie talk about the Saints and his new fishing poles,” she had said. She was a fixture around the office now and was one of the few people with password approval to get into all areas of the shelter and Forte’s apartment as well. She had put herself in charge of most of the details of Forte’s life and he had not complained.

  Of course, at times, she did enough complaining for both of them. She knew exactly which lines, however, were not to be crossed.

  She stood at the corner of the desk now watching him, the coffee mug dangling from a large black finger. “So, you don’t know a thing about it then,” she said.

  He sipped his coffee and looked away. “Sometimes it is best that you don’t know everything I know.” He said it kindly and she recognized it so.

  “True,” she said. “So be it.” She looked at him quizzically then turned and walked out of the office.

  He reached over for the TV remote and clicked through the stations as he waited for the news again. Talk shows and infomercials were on almost every channel. Rarely was he forced to watch television on weekday mornings and now he remembered why he was grateful for that. Stress formul
a pills that worked miracles, miracle cleaners that handled everything short of nuclear waste, skin cream that miraculously erased cellulite and stretch marks, miracle stop-smoking tapes – he stopped and watched that for ten seconds then kept clicking – a mother and daughter slap-fighting over their common boyfriend, two transvestites in court over disputed costs for some kind of operation, a TV preacher with an arch of hair that started a half-inch above one ear and swept over the top of his head to the other ear.

  He clicked back to the news.

  An anchorwoman with perfect skin and flawless hair was delivering an update on the Gretna explosion. The screen cut to a reporter standing across the street while the camera panned past the cop cars and fire-trucks in front of the house. The mangled hole where the bomb had exploded was barely visible between the emergency vehicles at the curb.

  “Police are still investigating the bombing in this peaceful neighborhood in Gretna,” the reporter said. “FBI explosives experts were brought in about 3 a.m., shortly after the explosion that broke several windows in nearby houses. Authorities have ruled out a gas leak or water heater explosion as causes for the blast but are still uncertain what may have caused it. No suspects have been identified.” Cut to the reporter in his blue blazer and rep tie holding a microphone in front of a fireman. “We got here quick so there wasn’t much danger of a fire spreading. If anyone would have been in there, though,” the fireman jerked his head toward the house, “they’d be done for now.”

  Forte drank his coffee and let the reporter’s words drone on. It had been a close call last night, but he had had plenty of close calls in his days as a Navy SEAL and as a security consultant. What bothered him was that the kidnapper had gotten away. Forte felt the anger coming up from a deep place where it had lain seething since he had watched the beige van fly over the railroad tracks. He needed an hour or two with the punching bag before he would be able to get rid of that kind of anger. Even then, it wouldn’t go away completely until he had found the kidnapper and recovered Hallee.

  He didn’t fool himself any more about the purity of his motives for wanting to recover the kidnapped child. He knew it wasn’t just because he wanted the child to be safe. His pride was wrapped up in it. He had learned that about himself. And he knew that at the end of the day, all he could be responsible for was that he had done the best he could do toward completing his mission.

  Somehow this situation was different. It was personal. And, in his business, taking things personally could get people killed.

  He wondered who the kidnapper was and where he was right now.

  The newscaster interrupted his thoughts. “This just in… a ransom note has been received by the Lamberth family concerning the kidnapping of Hallee Lamberth. Sources close to the FBI investigation tell us the kidnapper e-mailed the ransom note an hour ago with a demand of $25 million dollars in exchange for the 11-year-old girl.” A photo of Hallee standing on the deck of a sailboat quickly cut to video footage of the Lamberth house. The newscaster continued. “The FBI’s investigation of the kidnapping has produced no further leads as to the whereabouts of the kidnapper. Dr. Lamberth’s father, Thomas Lamberth, has said he will pay the ransom for the return of his granddaughter.”

  A knock on the door drew his focus away from the television.

  Rosalind Dent opened the door and closed it behind her without saying anything. She sat in the guest chair in front of his desk and laid her FBI notebook on her lap.

  “Come on in, Agent Dent,” Forte said. “Coffee? You look like you could use some perking up.” He hit the off button on the TV remote and the television screen went black.

  The FBI agent shook her head. “Where were you last night?”

  Forte forced his face into calmness. He took a slow drink from his mug. He could see that the agent’s eyes were bloodshot. They were locked on his face. He wondered if his lack of sleep showed under his own eyes as badly. “I was with a friend. At a bar. Why do you ask?”

  “At a bar? You don’t drink.”

  “Wasn’t drinking.”

  “Can your friend vouch for your whereabouts?”

  “Yes, but you better have a warrant in your hand when you ask him.”

  The air in the room seemed ten degrees cooler. Forte kept his gaze steady, as did Dent. Neither person blinked.

  “I got a call this morning at 5:30 a.m. I had just gotten back into bed after a little trip over to Gretna in the middle of the night. It was a woman’s voice. She said you had something to do with that explosion.”

  Forte felt a tiny buzz inside his head. “She called me by name?”

  Dent nodded.

  “And you believe her?”

  The FBI agent kept her eyes steady on his. “She said we would probably find some of the neighbors around the bombed house who would say they saw a black van leaving the area right after the explosion.”

  Forte kept silent.

  “And guess what?” Dent said. “We did find some people who saw a black van.” Her eyes seemed redder now. “You drive a black van, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And, let’s just say we found a witness who had written down the tag number of the van leaving the area. Could you guess what that number would be?”

  Forte did not blink. “Do you have a witness?”

  The agent’s eyes bore into his. She had leaned forward in her chair. A moment of silence passed between them.

  She leaned back. “No.”

  Forte let the corner of his mouth twitch. “Then I could not begin to guess what the tag number would be.”

  “Of course,” the agent said, “we could always go door to door with your van and ask if they had seen it.”

  “And waste a lot of time that could better be spent finding the kidnapper,” Forte said.

  “Dammit, Forte,” the agent hissed, “I told you to stay away from this case now. I didn’t make that decision but you know that I will enforce it.”

  Forte drank the last of his coffee.

  The phone rang. Forte picked it up.

  “Forte.”

  The voice on the other end was unmistakable. “I just got your message from yesterday, Mr. Forte,” said Jason Hamilton, “and I believe I might have an answer for you. Are you alone?”

  Forte felt the FBI agent’s eyes on him. “No,” he said.

  “Then I will talk and you listen,” the pastor said. “But let me remind you that you never heard this from me. Understood?”

  “Yes,” Forte said as he doodled on a legal pad on his desk. “Hold for a second.” He put his hand over the receiver. “Telephone survey,” he said to Dent. “Just a sec.”

  To Hamilton he said, “Continue.”

  Hamilton’s rich voice rolled through the wires. “There is a man, he used to be a policeman in Chicago. He was fired from the force there for refusing to arrest a pro-life protester during a demonstration. That was about a year and a half ago. Since then he has been hanging around some of the groups that the FBI calls pro-life terrorists.

  “About seven months ago, he dropped out of sight, my sources tell me. One of my sources did receive a postcard from him, about the time he disappeared. It was from a place in the Caribbean. Anyway, he is the only one who matches your criteria: an ex-cop who hasn’t been around recently.”

  Forte waited. “Yes…”

  Hamilton’s low chuckle came through the line. “Ah, you want his name. It is Jerah Schein.” He spelled the name. “He has blond hair, very blond, almost white, cut short. I’m sure you can find out everything else you need to know about him.” Hamilton paused. “I hope this helps you, Mr. Forte. I hope it helps you find the girl.”

  “Yes,” Forte said. “Thank you for calling.” He hung up.

  The FBI agent stood up. “You are definitely polite to telemarketers.” She eyed him suspiciously.

  Forte smiled. “That’s me. Mr. Polite.”

  Chapter 26

  Monday, 10 a.m.

  “May I serve you?” T
he drive-through speaker crackled with interference.

  Jerah Schein leaned out the driver’s window of the van. He spoke to the speaker. “Large coffee, large orange juice, two of the eggs-and-sausage specials, two cinnamon rolls.”

  “Skraaak… else for you today?” the speaker said.

  “That’s all,” Schein said.

  “Your total will be… skreeeek… forward… sssss.” The speaker hissed and went quiet.

  Schein edged the van forward, paid for the food, and put the bags of breakfast on the floor. The engine of the van gave a deep purr as he pulled out onto the street of the small town. He listened. When he had put the high-powered engine in the old van, right after he bought it, he wondered if he would need all that power. Now he was glad for that decision.

  The vehicle gave a few more creaks and groans after the flying leap over the railroad tracks the previous night. Nothing serious though. Months earlier, right after he bought the van, he had reinforced its frame and installed extra-heavy-duty shocks.

  In the past few hours, he had relived the chase several times in his mind. It had been close. Very close. The blasting train horn. The wide-eyed engineer in the locomotive. The steel-on-steel clatter of the train wheels carrying hundreds of tons. The hurtling jump over the tracks. He had felt like he could reach out and touch the front of the locomotive. Then the jolt of the landing and the adrenaline rush pouring over him like a drug high.

  He had driven north away from New Orleans, steering the van through the darkness of the countryside until he came to the shack in the woods. The padlock was still locked on the door of the shack. There had been no signs of tampering. The blue Pinto was still parked inside. He had pulled the van behind the shack and had checked Hallee for bruises from the car chase. After bumping her arm against the inside wall of the van when they landed after the train crossing jump, she had cried a bit. But nothing serious. They had both dozed for a few hours until the bright Louisiana sun filtered through the trees around the shack.

  Now, Schein steered the van off the highway outside town and wound his way through the gravel roads. Three cows raised their heads and gave him a lazy glance as he passed, then resumed their grazing. He saw no one as he drove through the countryside.

  At the shack he parked and unlocked the door. He walked around the Pinto and opened the door. Hallee lay across the back seat of the car, still asleep. He poked her with a finger.