Torn

by Chris Jordan

  “So now you don’t want me to go home? What changed?”

  “Thinking it through. This could be nothing, just a guy who thinks he saw something, but it could be a ploy to get you out of the house. So find a safe, public place and stay there until I find you. Promise me you’ll do that?”

  “Yeah, okay. Wait for you at the airport.”

  “Good, great. Gotta go. We’re boarding. I’ll see you in less than two hours.”

  Taking unnecessary risks is not my thing. Never has been. Bungee jumping, skydiving, extreme sports, that’s not me. My idea of danger is taking a chance on a new furniture polish. But there’s no way I’m going to let Mr. Paranoid walk away. This might be a waste of time, in fact probably is. I know that. Maybe the guy saw another kid who reminded him of Noah, an honest mistake. Maybe he’s off his medication. Maybe he’s scheming to collect a reward. Maybe he’s one of those sickos who gets his kicks messing with worried parents. Whatever, I’m going to find out. Because it’s also possible that he’s the key, that something he witnessed will lead to my son.

  How can a mother not take that risk?

  My destination, the Budget Rental lot, is on the loop at Airport Road, within sight of the terminal complex. Plenty of lights blazing, but to tell the truth, it feels way more remote than I expected. When I pull up to the rear of the lot as instructed, my little Subaru wagon shivers, buffeted by great blasts of wind from the runways and open fields.

  Wind from the north we usually blame on Canada. This is from the east, so I guess Vermont must be at fault. Or maybe Albany. Whatever, I wish it would stop. Surely no one will be wandering around in weather like this, not even Mr. Paranoid. Peering through the slightly blurred windshield, all I can make out are bright security lights, stark shadows, and row upon row of partially frosted vehicles. Small, vivid whirlwinds of snow dancing like tight-hipped ballerinas through the lanes between cars, then suddenly collapsing, as if exhausted by the cold, sucked back into the earth.

  He’s not going to show, whoever he is. Something spooked him. Come as soon as you can, he’d said, as if he’d be there, regardless. As if he worked here. Doing what? The exit barrier is automatic, and if there’s someone manning the return booth, no more than a cubicle, he’s keeping out of sight, below the window line. Asleep perhaps?

  Should I honk the horn, announce myself?

  Inches from my head, a frozen claw rakes ice from the side window. My heart clenches as I jerk around to see a ski-masked face studying me up close, eyes watering.

  Not a claw, but a plastic ice scraper. He gestures with the scraper, wanting me to lower the window.

  Mr. Paranoid.

  I lower the window a few inches, right hand in the pocket of my parka, clutching the canister of pepper spray.

  “Haley Corbin?” he asks.

  A boy’s voice, younger in person. He peels up the ski mask, his breath steaming. A bony, feral-looking face, bad skin, uneven gaps in his teeth. High school or there-abouts-under twenty for sure. The puffs of steam carry the smell of cigarettes and beer.

  Mr. Paranoid is drinking on the job. Maybe to calm his nerves-he’s a jittery little guy, dancing beside my car.

  “In the van,” he says, gesturing with the plastic scraper as if it’s a light saber. “We’ll talk there. Not out here.”

  Looking around, very furtive, so nervous and flighty I have to remind myself that he could be a threat. He might smite me with the little scraper, breathe toxic fumes at me, gnaw at me with his brittle teeth.

  Okay, he looks harmless, more scared of me than I of him, but my hand stays on the pepper spray.

  “Keeping the windshields clear, that’s my job,” he says, suddenly chatty as we squeak through the cold snow. Leading me toward a white Budget Rental van, motor running, windshield steamed. “Every vehicle comes with a scraper, but sometimes that ain’t enough. So we got, you know, deicing spray and stuff.”

  “Like the airlines.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “Like that.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Um, I, ah, rather not say. No names, okay?”

  “You know mine.”

  “Yeah.”

  I stop a yard from the van, holding my ground. Hand still in my parka, but ready. “I’m not getting in there with you,” I announce. “What if you decide to drive way?”

  “Why would I do that?” he asks, sounding stunned by the idea.

  “What do you know about Noah?” I demand. “What did you see? Did you see my little boy?”

  His hands start waving around his head, as if he’s being assaulted by bees. “No! Not out here!” he cautions. “Inside. You can sit in the driver’s seat. Take the keys if you want, I ain’t drivin’ you nowhere.”

  He stamps around the van, gets into the passenger seat, slams the door. I tap at the window. He shakes his head, points at the driver’s side.

  I slip inside, holding the spray canister in my lap. He stares at the dashboard, his bony face all knotted up, as if he’s tasting something unpleasantly sour.

  “Okay, here I am, like you wanted. So what about my little boy? What did you see?”

  Mr. Paranoid turns to me, his expression still nervous but now also sorrowful.

  “Sorry,” he says plaintively. “I really needed the money.”

  Before I can react, something rises behind me.

  A strong hand clamps a wet rag to my face.

  Dizzy, swirling. Fumes in my eyes.

  I’m screaming into the rag when the darkness pulls me down, into the cold, into the black.

  5. Strolling Like Kanye

  Randall Shane cools his heels in a small, windowless room deep inside the airport terminal. The room is furnished with a small laminated table, three molded plastic chairs, and way too much incandescent lighting. The bilious green walls can’t be an accident. Probably some Homeland Security consultant with a theory about color-induced confessions. Sick-making color schemes being about as effective, in Shane’s not-so-humble opinion, as blasting loud music at suspects. Turn down the Snoop Dogg, I surrender! Right. Tell it to the Branch Davidians.

  An hour creeps by, ever so slowly. Deprived of his cell, laptop, and notes-all connection to the outside world-he has nothing to occupy his thoughts but an examination of what has transpired since his plane touched down. Whatever mistakes or errors in judgment he may have made, beginning with his decision to go to Washington when, in hindsight, he should have been looking out for the lady. His thoughts keep roving back to that awful moment of tightly controlled panic when he realizes that his worst fears have come to pass: his client is nowhere to be found, not in the airport or vicinity, not at her home. Haley Corbin is gone. First her husband, then her son, now her.

  A burly, sour-faced man enters holding two steaming Starbucks cups. He kicks the door shut behind him. “Hey, Randy, thought you might want a coffee.”

  “Randy?” says Shane, lifting an eyebrow.

  “Just trying to be friendly.”

  “Ah,” says Shane without inflection. “That explains it. You were just being friendly when you locked the door.”

  Preston Chumley, a forty-four-year-old senior investigator with the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigations, feigns an innocent look. “The door was locked? My apologies. That was an oversight. You’re not being detained. You’re not under arrest.”

  “I’m also not a suspect,” Shane points out. “The sooner you confirm that to your own satisfaction, the sooner you can concentrate on finding Mrs. Corbin.”

  “Thanks for the advice. We’re doing our best, in our simple, bumbling way.”

  Shane sighs, studying the man, decides his eyes are too close together, that’s the problem. Makes it hard for him to see the obvious. Plus his beefy neck bulges over his collar, causing him to resemble a pale, overstuffed sausage. Maybe it’s the too-tight clothing-your basic cheap plainclothes suit-that makes him irritable and suspicious. Why else detain the very man who reports a woman missing?
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br />   “Did you call my contact numbers?”

  Chumley shrugs. “I called the first one. Monica whatever.”

  “FBI Assistant Director Monica Bevins.”

  “Yeah, her. I left a message. Assistant Director, that’s a really high-ranking individual.”

  “That’s right. She reports to the Deputy Director.”

  “I’m impressed. Thing is, she hasn’t got around to returning my call. So either she doesn’t know you, doesn’t respond to inquiries from state investigators, or she’s busy with some really important FBI stuff and can’t be bothered. Which pretty much leaves us back where we started.”

  “Me reporting a crime.”

  “You reporting your suspicion-I believe you called it a ‘gut instinct’-that a woman was abducted from this airport.”

  “Or nearby.”

  “The car-rental lot, yeah. Happens to be on airport property.”

  “Have you found her vehicle?”

  Instead of answering, Chumley chews on a torn cuticle, spits it out. Cuticle chewing in public is, in Shane’s opinion, a felony offense, but the investigator doesn’t seem the least ashamed of his rude, disgusting behavior. Probably talks on his cell while urinating; he’s that kind of guy.

  Shane tells himself to cool it, that the more personal this gets, the less he’ll accomplish. What matters here is Mrs. Corbin, not minor bruises to his own ego.

  “If you think I’ve been interfering in an investigation, I apologize,” Shane says. “It won’t happen again.”

  Chumley shrugs lazily. “Oh yeah? I know how you operate. You’re all over the Internet. Testimonials from grateful parents. Very moving.”

  “Don’t believe everything you read on the Net.”

  “Oh, I don’t. All that stuff about Randall Shane never giving up, taking the law into his own hands, gathering evidence without warrants, impersonating a law officer, making local investigators look like clowns. You really did all that, you’d have been prosecuted and I checked-you haven’t. So the testimonials are bull. The big deal former FBI Special Agent, that’s bull, too, isn’t it, Randy?”

  “If you say so.”

  “I mean, come on, it’s not like you were out there recovering kidnap victims when you were with the agency. You weren’t exactly kicking down doors, right? You were, quote, developing print recognition software, unquote.”

  “That’s right.”

  “A computer geek. Big guy like you? My guess, they discovered you were useless in the field so they stuck you back at the lab, gave you your very own pocket protector.”

  Shane nods agreeably. “I still have it. The pocket protector. Better than a flak jacket.”

  “My point exactly,” says Chumley, attempting to loosen his collar with a plump pink finger, bleeding around the torn cuticle.

  “It’s true,” Shane says, shamefaced. “I’m a complete fraud. I’ve been taking credit for work done by real police. I’m completely out of my depth. That’s why I reported Mrs. Corbin missing, because I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Chumley’s piggy little eyes brighten. “So you admit you misrepresented yourself to the attendant at the car-rental lot?”

  “Not intentionally, no. I’d never do that. But he may have gotten the impression I was an active agent, rather than retired.”

  Chumley sits up straight. “You badged him?”

  “I don’t have a badge. I showed him a leather folder holding my business card. You have that, along with my wallet.”

  “Guy thinks he saw a badge.”

  “It was snowing. I woke him up. He fell asleep listening to the shopping channel. There was alcohol on his breath. You probably noticed that, being a senior investigator and all.”

  “Don’t smart-mouth me, pal. Yeah, the guy is a drunk, that doesn’t mean he didn’t see a badge.”

  “Double negative, I think.”

  “What?”

  Shane sighs, tries to look ashamed. “You got me, Trooper. I put all that stuff on the missing children forums myself, the testimonials, the pictures of kids reunited with their families. I’m in it strictly for the money, taking advantage of grief-stricken parents. When I was with the agency I hid behind a desk because I was afraid to kick in doors. I faint at the sight of blood. I suck.”

  “I knew it,” says Chumley. He has the hungry, can’t-wait-another-moment expression of a man about to gobble up a big juicy jelly doughnut.

  “But in this particular instance I didn’t break any laws,” Shane adds, almost sorrowfully. “I did not impersonate an officer of the law. I no longer own a badge, not even a commemorative or courtesy badge, and if I did I wouldn’t use it because that would be illegal and I’m a coward and afraid to go to jail.”

  The trooper sucks his teeth, looking irritated. “She’s rich and crazy and you took advantage of her. How much you get?”

  “Nothing yet. We hadn’t agreed on a fee.”

  “Oh yeah? Is that your story? Maybe I never worked for the feds, but we got our sources, and I happen to know that Haley Corbin withdrew ten grand in cash within the last few days.”

  “Wouldn’t give it to me,” Shane says. “Showed me the cash, said I had to produce results. Very hard-nosed lady, Mrs. Corbin.”

  “It’s illegal to pose as a private investigator.”

  “I’m a consultant. That’s legal.”

  “Where I sit? All you fake P.I.s and unlicensed P.I.s and so-called consultants, all you do is take advantage of folks don’t know better. Vultures.”

  “You got me. I’m scum of the earth. Did you locate her vehicle?”

  “I’m asking the questions here, and so far-”

  He’s interrupted by a brisk knock on the door. A young, uniformed trooper leans in. “Sir? Major Seavey on the landline.”

  Chumley scowls, gets to his feet. “Stay where you are, please,” he says to Shane, exiting.

  The lock on the door clicks.

  Shane leans back with his fingers laced behind his neck, feeling much better, thank you. From the sound of it Major Seavey would be Chumley’s boss at the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the troopers plainclothes division. A wiser mind, no doubt, or he wouldn’t have risen to such a high rank at the BCI. At that level he’d have had many dealings and links with various federal enforcement agencies, be less inclined to react like S.I. Chumley, nursing his resentments.

  That, or he’d order Shane be formally held on a trumped-up charge until the BCI boys could sort it out. Fifteen minutes tick by with the alacrity of paint drying on a rainy day. Shane studies his fingernails. Wishing he had his laptop, or failing that something to read. Newspaper, magazine, novel, cereal box, whatever.

  Centuries pass. Eventually S.I. Chumley reenters the room with a new attitude. From his expression, one might assume the new attitude has been achieved by having his fingernails extracted.

  Shane relaxes.

  “Follow me,” says the newly forlorn investigator.

  Shane follows him out of the interrogation room, down a series of narrow, windowless hallways, to a room not much larger than the one he’s just vacated. Chumley holds the door, says nothing as Shane passes. The room is crammed with small surveillance screens, floor to ceiling. Flat-screen LCD monitors, and most have been divided into four separate feeds from video cams positioned throughout the airport. He doesn’t bother counting but there have to be more than a hundred cameras in the system.

  “Impressive,” Shane says to his silently brooding host.

  It isn’t particularly impressive, but he’s trying to be nice. No sense rubbing the man’s nose in the mess he made. The practice rarely works with puppy dogs, never with humans.

  Without meeting Shane’s eyes, the burly investigator explains. “Assistant Director Bevins has requested that you be afforded full cooperation. My supervisor has ordered me to comply.”

  “I do appreciate it,” says Shane.

  “Figured you for a fake,” Chumley continues, pulling the words out as if they’re as de
eply imbedded as bullets. “Feds say you’re not…my mistake.”

  “Not a problem. What did you find?”

  Chumley heaves a deep sigh, nods at the surveillance screens. “The vic’s vehicle. Ground level in the long-term parking garage. Empty.”

  “You conduct a search?”

  “Not without a warrant, no. But we did a thorough visual. It’s a wagon, fully visible, no place to hide a body, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” Shane admits, the clench in his belly relaxing somewhat. “You get her on film, parking the car?”

  “No film,” says Chumley, a little huffy. “This is a fully digital operation.”

  Shane waits. Film is just a figure of speech, and Chumley knows it.

  “Not her,” the inspector finally explains, words thick in his throat. “The kid who parked it.”

  Shane is instantly fully alert, blood humming. “Show me,” he says.

  Chumley cues up the MPEGs, indicates that Shane can run the little joystick if he so desires. The first segment, four seconds or so in duration, is from the automatic ticket dispenser at the south entrance to the long-term parking garage, across the street from the terminal. As the driver runs down the window he averts his head. Down jacket with the hood up, total concealment of the face. Shane gets the same youthful impression Chumley mentioned, but all he can really identify with any certainty is the slim hand plucking the ticket from the dispenser.

  “Caucasian.”

  “White guy, yeah.”

  “He knows about the cameras.”

  “Anybody who pays attention knows about the cameras. We don’t hide ’em.”

  “Maybe he’s an employee.”

  “Maybe.”

  Shane takes his time, plays the file through in slo-mo, and then one frame at a time. Nothing pops. Nobody in the background behind the driver. Passenger seat appears to be empty. No indication Haley Corbin is on board. No revealing reflections in any surface, glass or mirror. He scrolls forward to the next file segment. The main feature, fourteen seconds in duration. Opens as Mrs. Corbin’s Subaru wagon wheels into a compact car slot. Seen from the rear at a distance that takes in the entire row of cars. The Subaru door opens almost instantly, but the driver has trouble exiting the vehicle because he’s parked too close to the next car.