by John Case
They climbed out. One boy wanted to go into the convenience store attached to the gas station, find the driver, and get money for ice cream. But the other boy had come to doubt the story their abductor told them. He was worried that he and his brother never left the compound where they were being kept. This trip in the RV was the first time. He wanted to telephone their mom’s best friend, Phoebe. So he and his brother ran toward the shopping plaza, went inside, and looked for a pay phone. They were old hands at making collect calls, but the pay phone wouldn’t work. So they went into a gift shop to ask if they could use the phone to make a collect call. The clerk recognized them and called the police.
By the time a squad car came to the scene, the RV was gone.
In the aftermath, press coverage of the happy reunion of Sandling with her sons was muted. There was cynical speculation about how that RV door “fell open,” about Sandling’s successful efforts (enlisting a helpful lawyer working pro bono) to protect the boys from aggressive interrogation by the authorities. Against this kind of negative stance on the part of the police and the larger community, it was not surprising that despite a wave of testimonials from employers, personnel at the school the boys attended, and friends about how Sandling really had turned her life around – it took several months and a lawsuit for her to regain custody of her sons.
I expand my search and pull down everything I can about the Sandling case; a couple of hours later, I’m convinced that my whole impression was biased by coverage that scapegoated Emma Sandling. Shoffler seemed to have bought into that, too, along with Judy Jones of the FBI – at least they never talked as if the case was relevant, despite its obvious parallels to my own.
The parallels – six-year-old twin boys kidnapped from a public place – are so striking I can’t stop reading the clips. Maybe there’s something I overlooked when I bought into the assumption that Sandling’s sketchy personal history meant she’d somehow rigged the kidnapping of her own sons. Reading through it all, though, there’s no evidence that anything other than what Emma Sandling said happened did, in fact, happen. Trueblood had an alibi. No other accomplice surfaced. Sandling never once changed her story. And although the gift store clerk was allotted a portion of the reward, none of it ever trickled down to Sandling.
I spend the next two hours talking to the police stations in Corvallis and Eureka. At first, when I introduce myself and explain my area of interest – the Sandling case – I get the runaround. When I push it, the reaction surprises me: I get stonewalled.
Using names published in the newspaper accounts of the kidnapping, I hunt down the telephone numbers of Emma Sandling’s clients, her social workers, her lawyer, and anyone else whose name I can prise out of the media coverage. I reach about half of them and I get the same reaction. They don’t know where she is. They can’t help me.
I push myself out of my chair, realizing that it’s dark outside and I’ve been hunched over the computer for hours. I intend to continue my pursuit of Emma Sandling, but I know I should eat something. I’ve been losing weight steadily since Liz left me; people are beginning to remark on it.
I head for the kitchen to forage, although I know there’s not much left. In the fridge are a couple of dried-out pieces of cheese, a moldy cantaloupe, and a half gallon of milk that proves to be sour. A rotisserie chicken I failed to wrap is now as desiccated as a mummy. The freezer holds nothing but shrunken ice cubes and a single frozen pizza. I look on the pizza box for the pull date and find it under an encrustation of frost crystals. The date, faint and purple, is more than a year ago.
Even this depresses me. The pizza has been in the freezer since before my bust-up with Liz, since before my life disintegrated. It was probably bought as dinner for the boys. I have a moment during which I elevate the pizza to some kind of talismanic status. I find I’m reluctant to throw it away. I shake my head, upend the milk in the sink, and toss everything else.
I’ve been eating out most of the time. That’s got to stop; it’s too expensive. I tell myself I’ll go shopping tomorrow, get some TV dinners. And some healthy stuff. Apples. O.J.
For the first time since the boys were kidnapped, I pull on my running shoes and head out into the humid Washington night. I’m way out of shape, but running is a relief. I enjoy the sensation of moving, of the sweat collecting on me, of the labored rhythm of my breathing. I like the way the cars rumble past, the haloed lights in the mist, and how my attention focuses on basic issues: where to put my feet, how to angle my run to pass pedestrians most efficiently, how to time street crossings in such a way that I don’t have to break stride.
I go out for about fifteen minutes and then head back. I stop at the 7-Eleven on the corner of Porter and Connecticut, breathing hard, sweat pouring off me as I dig out the five-dollar bill from the key pocket of my shorts. It, too, is damp with sweat.
The clerk is the one Jack started calling Slo-Mo – as in “Oh, no, it’s Slo-Mo.” She’s a shy, thin woman, little more than a girl, with beautiful features. She does everything at such an exasperatingly deliberate pace that customers who know her have been known to turn around if they see more than one person in line.
“Two Jamaican beef patties,” I tell the clerk. These will be dinner: tasty, if greasy, meat pastries.
The clerk looks at me with enormous brown eyes and then looks down at her hands.
“You the man who children is gone,” she says.
“That’s right.”
“My uncle – he know these thing from the other world.” She presses one finger to her forehead. “He say your boys all right.”
“Your uncle? What other world? Does he know where the boys are?”
“No, no.” Her fingers twist together and she looks to the side, eyes cast down. “It’s – what you say? – spirits world. He say your boys not there, still in this world. I tell him that you live near this shop, that you come in here many day. My uncle say this – your boys all right. I think myself you like to know.” She fashions her facial expression into a shy smile that is also a kind of shrug.
“Thank you.” And I mean it. I’ll take whatever glimmer of light I can find in the world. “Thank you for telling me.”
“You welcome.” She pauses. “Spicy or plain?”
I toss the change into a big glass jar set out to collect funds for a child named Belinda, who has leukemia. Another shot in the dark – like the websites, like the milk cartons, like all of it. When it comes to children, you can’t go with percentages or probabilities; you do what you can, whatever you can.
“Thank you for telling me what your uncle said.” My gratitude is heartfelt; it’s amazing how this unsolicited bit of encouragement lifts my heart.
The Madonna of the cash register rewards me with a beatific smile.
CHAPTER 16
“Hang on,” Shoffler says, “we’re just breaking up the huddle here.” I hear voices, the chime of elevators, Shoffler exchanging parting comments with someone. Then he’s back. “So what’s up?”
“The Sandling twins.”
If I didn’t know the detective so well, maybe I wouldn’t notice, but I catch the hesitation and the sudden holdback in his voice. “So – what about them?”
“The more I read the more it sounds like Kevin and Sean. The parallels are compelling. And I can’t understand why you and Judy Jones dismissed the case as irrelevant. Pretty much blew it off.”
Once again, there’s that hitch in his voice, a guarded quality. “We checked into it, Alex. We did. Look – that kidnapping took place a whole continent away. You got the ages of the boys and the fact they’re twins. That’s it.”
“That’s it?”
“Apart from that, there didn’t seem to be a connection.” Shoffler clears his throat. “The mother, you know – she wasn’t exactly a pillar of the community.”
“Look, Ray – I’ve read everything I can find about the case. And far as I can tell, Emma Sandling may not have been Mother Teresa but there’s no evidence she had a
nything to do with kidnapping her children.”
“That’s your opinion. Maybe there’s stuff you don’t know about.”
“Must be. Because as far as I can tell there wasn’t exactly a full court press to hunt down the kidnapper once the kids popped up in Eureka.”
“You’re wrong,” Shoffler says. “There was an investigation. A thorough one, too. But the mother wasn’t exactly helpful.”
“You mean-”
“I mean Emma Sandling was not cooperative. She said it was to protect the boys, but not everybody bought that. Look – the kids are safe and sound; it’s a happy ending. For a few days, that was big news, a miracle. But after? There’s no perpetrator, no charges, no story, no trial. All you got is the boys themselves and a police investigation that goes nowhere. Why? Because for whatever reason – whether she’s involved somehow or she genuinely wants to protect her kids – Mommy won’t talk and she won’t let her kids talk.”
“She could have made a buck or two out of the media, that’s for sure.”
“True, and that could mean she’s on the level. Or maybe it’s just damage control. The more the thing gets looked at, the more her part in it is exposed to the light of day.”
“If there was a part.”
“Okay, if there was a part. But the consensus out there was that she had a hand in it, that it was some kind of shakedown that got screwed up. After which, Mother Sandling made herself scarce.”
“I don’t think so.”
Shoffler says nothing for a moment. Then he says: “Why not?”
“Because the more I look at it, the more I get this creepy feeling that whoever took the Sandling kids is the same guy who took mine. They got away, so he took my kids to replace them.”
“Hunh.” A pause. “A ‘creepy feeling’?”
“It’s the same pattern. Come on, Shoff.”
“There’s gotta be a boatload of twins on the West Coast. Why would this guy come all the way across the country?”
“I don’t know, but the point is I’m looking at this Sandling thing and it sounds so much like my boys. I figure I’ll take a closer look. But I can’t, because for one thing, Emma Sandling? She’s gone; she might as well have fallen off the face of the earth.”
“You tried to find her, hunh?”
“I did. And finding people is one of my job skills. If you’re a reporter, you’ve gotta have sources and you have to find them whether they want to be found or not. But I can’t find Emma Sandling.”
“Hunh.”
“And while I’m trying to track her down, I’m also talking to the cops out there in Oregon. Well, no, that’s not accurate. I’m talking at the cops out there in Oregon.”
“I don’t-”
“I call both jurisdictions – Corvallis, where the boys went missing, and Eureka, where they stumbled out of that trailer. Eureka – they tell what they can, which is not much. But Corvallis? I get nothing, Ray. A stone wall. The cops flat out won’t talk to me. They give me some bullshit about ‘privacy issues.’”
“So this is why you called me.” He lets out a sigh.
“Yeah. I thought you might be able to talk to them out there. Let them know I’m not gonna be a problem.”
There’s a long moment before he answers. “I’m sorry, Alex. I can’t help you. I wish I could, but my hands are tied.”
“Your hands are tied? We’re talking about my sons. Ray, you can’t-”
But the detective is no longer on the line.
Two hours later, I’m outside Shoffler’s place in Greenbelt, Maryland, waiting for him to show up. The house isn’t what I expected – although I’m not sure what that was. I knew Shoffler worked seventy-hour weeks, that he’d burned through two marriages. I guess I expected a crash pad but the tidy rancher in front of me is neat and homey, with a picket fence and well-kept flowerbeds. There’s even a grapevine wreath on the door.
At first, I sit on the porch, but at dusk a cloud of biting gnats drives me back to my car. I wait, listening to the O’s game on the radio and periodically cranking up the air when it gets too hot.
I’m jolted out of my doze by a deep metallic concussion that seems to take place inside my skull. The sound is actually a rap on my car door, a fact that I realize when I open my eyes to see Shoffler looming next to my window.
He’s not happy to see me. He stands in a predatory, almost threatening stance, half in shadow, illuminated by the sickly green of the streetlight. He looks terrible, irritated but so exhausted that my eyes flick to the dashboard clock to see what time it is: 3:32 A.M.
A film of moisture coats my skin. My mouth is cotton, my lips dry and cracked. My shirt is glued to the leather seat and makes a little sucking noise as I sit up and reach for the door handle. But Shoffler pushes his big hand against the Jeep’s door and scowls at me.
“Go home, Alex.”
“No.”
“Just go home.”
“I need to talk to you.”
He pivots on his heel and moves toward the front door; he’s inside before I can get out of the car. I ring his doorbell, which actually goes ding-dong, at least a dozen times. I can’t believe it. I’ve been sitting in the driveway for six hours. Back in the car, my impulse is to lean on the horn, cause a ruckus, force Shoffler to deal with me. But remembering the look on his face, I decide against it.
I’ve spent a lot of time with Shoffler in the past few weeks, and every minute of it I’ve been attuned to him with the rapt attention of a lover, always on the lookout for telltale signs: Has he heard something? Does he have news? I’ve become adept at reading the clues of body language – vocal inflection, gestures, and facial expressions.
I also know that cops and military types put a lot of stock in respect. If I lean on the horn and get in Shoffler’s face in that public way, I won’t get anywhere. He might even have me arrested. I move my car two blocks away and set the alarm on my cell phone to wake me at six. The detective won’t catch me dozing again.
When he comes out the door at 7:44, he looks surprisingly jaunty for a man who got – at most – four hours of sleep. And then he sees me, as I step out from behind his Crown Vic.
His shoulders drop. He wags his head. “Jesus, Alex.”
I just stand there. The Crown Vic’s door locks snap open.
“Get in,” he says.
“What?”
“Get in.”
It’s already hot outside, the sun a white blur behind the dull haze of sky. The interior of the car is stifling. It stinks, too, of old take-out food and stale cigarette smoke spiked with pine air freshener. I’ve spent enough time with Shoffler now to know this about him: he drinks coffee all day long, he chain smokes when he can, and he eats most of his meals in the car.
He backs out of the driveway, lowers all the windows. I think at first that we’re heading out for coffee, Dunkin’ Donuts or the 7-Eleven, but before long we’re on Route 50, rolling along in a rush of white noise. The detective remains silent next to me. After a few minutes, he fools with the controls and all the windows slide closed, with the exception of his. He punches up the air, and lights a cigarette, inhaling with a long greedy pull. It’s out of habit – not out of deference to me – that he exhales out the window. He’s pissed and the irritation comes off him like a force field.
“Where are we going?”
“I got a meeting,” he says, “on the Hill.”
“But-”
“You wanna talk? This is the time I got. You want to get back to your car sometime before midnight? That’s your problem.”
“Okay.”
I have to resist the reflex to apologize, or at least say something that might lower the tension in the car. It’s better this way, with both of us pissed off. This way there won’t be any bullshit.
We’re on 95 now. Shoffler plunges in and out of dense traffic, his driving style fearless and so aggressive I have to work not to push my feet against the floor. He smokes his cigarette all the way down to the filter, stabs
it out in the crowded ashtray, then flips the lid closed.
It’s not actually out, and within a minute a thin fringe of smoke – and the acrid smell of burning filters – seeps out from the seam of the ashtray. After a couple of minutes he opens the ashtray again and dribbles some cold coffee into the smoldering mess. There’s a sizzle as the liquid hits the filters, followed by a new and terrible smell. “Aromatherapy,” Shoffler says. He shoves the ashtray shut and taps his fingers against the exterior of the car. “Look,” he says after a while, “I’m not really pissed at you.”
“You’re not?”
“You know why? Because you’re right.”
He yanks the big car into a momentary gap in the left lane, earning a long complaining beep. He sticks his hand out the window, middle finger raised. “My daughter tells me I lack maturity – that’s how she puts it. I tell her this is maturity for me: I give these jokers the finger now instead of pulling ’ em over.” He rolls his shoulders, pats his breast pocket looking for a cigarette, knocks one out, lights it. “So – Mother Sandling.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s like the Sniper case. Everybody’s saying the sniper is a white loner – white, white, white. White guy in a white van. Now, you may not know this, but as the thing is going down, some of the guys in the District – I’m talking about African American police officers – they don’t think so. They’ve got the idea – from eyewitness testimony, from voice tape – that this guy’s a brother. They also think he’s driving a converted cop car, a blue Crown Vic or a Chevy Caprice – what they call a hooptie. Some of the yo’s are partial to recycled police cars – whether out of a sense of irony or just because these babies do go. But the point is, do the rest of us hear any of this? Why is it that no one, in any of the briefings, says one word about a black guy in a blue sedan who calls himself we?”