Web of Fear

by Mike Omer

  “Okay,” Hannah said.

  “We’re trying to trace this so-called Noel that Abigail and Gracie went to meet,” Mancuso added. “We assume there’s no such individual, but we want to make sure. We might be able to find the computer or phone that was used by the person using that name.”

  “The FBI and the police department are working together,” Bailey said. “We’re currently pairing FBI agents with local patrols and detectives in our effort to resolve this as fast as possible.”

  “Pairing them to do what?” Hannah asked.

  “Collect statements, CCTV feeds, check out leads,” Mancuso said. “We’ve paired you with Agent Ward.”

  Hannah looked around. “Who’s—”

  “He’s still on his way from Boston,” Mancuso said. “Meanwhile, there’s something else we need you to do. Naamit Lisman approached me and asked that you update her regarding our progress.”

  “There is no progress,” Hannah pointed out.

  “There’s always progress,” Bailey said, frowning in annoyance. “We need Naamit to be cooperative. The kidnapper will contact her again. When he does, it would be best if she involves us. Please drive over there and reassure her we’re doing everything we can.”

  “Okay,” Hannah said. “And then what?”

  “If this is a professional kidnapping for ransom, we have some time,” Mancuso said. “Abigail will probably be kept safely. But if the ransom letter is just a ruse, we need to act much faster. We need to check all registered sex offenders in Glenmore Park, see if any of them might have done this. You and Ward will do that today.”

  “Do you think it could be a sex offender?” Hannah asked. “Gracie said there were two men. I don’t know of any sex offenders in the area that have been known to work in pairs.”

  “I agree,” Bailey said. “But we can’t take any chances. If Abigail has been taken by a pedophile, we don’t know how long he’ll keep her alive.”

  Chapter Five

  Hannah met with Naamit and Ron at their home to detail all the effort invested by the FBI and the police. Her descriptions of everything they were doing seemed to fall flat unheard and useless, as though they’d been sucked up into a deep void in the center of the living room. Naamit stared vacantly at her, lost in her own dark thoughts. Ron kept glancing at Naamit worriedly, then at Hannah, his eyes imploring her to say something that would make things better, that would give them a real sliver of hope. Hannah had none to give.

  “We don’t have three million dollars,” Naamit suddenly said.

  “I know,” Hannah answered.

  “If we sell the house, open Abigail’s college fund, take a very large loan, we might get to… half a million dollars.”

  Hannah nodded, not knowing what to say.

  “Do you think they’ll agree?” Naamit asked. “When they realize we don’t have the money? Maybe we can prove it somehow, send them a printout of our bank account? Hannah, there is no way we can get three million dollars.”

  “I know that, Naamit. We’ll figure it out.”

  “Why did they ask for such a huge amount? You said they were professional. Don’t they see that—”

  “We don’t know yet,” Hannah said.

  The room lapsed into silence. Then Hannah’s phone rang. She answered quickly.

  “Hello?”

  “Detective Shor? I’m Agent Ward. I’m outside on the street. Next to”—there was a moment of silence—“23 Lavetta Way. Is that the right address?”

  “Yes,” Hannah said. “Wait there. I’ll be out in a minute.” She hung up.

  “Any developments?” Naamit asked when Hannah put the phone in her bag.

  Hannah shook her head. “Just following leads,” she said.

  “What leads?”

  “We need to question some of the… criminal element in the area. One of them could be connected to the kidnapping.”

  “Oh,” Naamit said. She didn’t sound reassured.

  “I’ll let you know as soon as there are any developments.”

  The couple barely seemed to register her words. She left, relieved to get outside. Her eyes, tired from the lack of sleep, squinted as the bright sunlight hit them. Half-blind, she rummaged in her small handbag, locating her sunglasses. She put them on and the world swam into a relaxed shade of brown. A green Chevy was parked nearby, the engine running. She walked over and knocked on the passenger window. The window rolled down and the driver smiled at her—a shining, perfect smile.

  “Detective Shor?”

  “Right. Are you Agent Ward?”

  “That’s me. Come in.”

  She pulled open the passenger door and sat in the car. It was clean, and smelled of a pine air freshener. Hannah thought of her own car: the empty plastic water bottles on the floor, the small garbage can overflowing with used tissues and snack wrappers. She was happy they were driving in Ward’s car.

  “You can call me Hannah,” she said.

  He smiled at her again. He was clean shaven, his skin warm brown, his hair black and cropped short. His shoulders were wide, and he seemed to be tall, though it was hard to be sure, since he was sitting down.

  “Okay,” he said. “Hi, Hannah.”

  She waited for a moment, then said, “And I’ll just call you Agent, I guess.”

  “Well, my friends call me Agey,” he said, then burst out laughing. “My name’s Clint.”

  “Nice to meet you, Clint,” Hannah grinned. His good cheer was welcome after the difficult hour she’d had with Naamit and Ron. “So… We’re gonna talk to some perverts? Where do we start?”

  He reached a long arm into the backseat and pulled a black briefcase up front and into his lap. Opening it, he rummaged around inside and drew out a beige folder. “Well,” he said, inspecting the contents of the folder, “I thought we could start with a guy named… Lionel Cole?”

  “Wouldn’t it make more sense to start with the heavy offenders?” Hannah asked. “We could start with—”

  “Lionel Cole was convicted of three open and gross lewdness acts with children ages nine to fourteen,” Clint said, frowning. “That sounds serious to me. And our victim is twelve years old, which fits the pattern of—”

  “Lionel Cole was convicted of open and gross lewdness with children because the district attorney wanted to make an example of him,” Hannah said impatiently. “The children weren’t victims, exactly; they were simply there. He doesn’t target children. He doesn’t target anyone, actually. He just—”

  “We can discuss it on the way,” Clint said, shutting the folder and shoving it into the briefcase. “I prioritized the list of offenders, but I’d be happy to hear your opinions. Let’s start with Mr. Cole.”

  Hannah looked at him, feeling her face flush pink. “By all means,” she said, her voice steely. “Let’s talk to this dangerous sexual predator.”

  Hannah was icily quiet the entire drive to Lionel’s house. Agent Ward didn’t seem to mind. He was a chatty fellow, and as they drove, he told her about the time he’d tracked down a violent rapist in Worcester. Hannah listened distractedly. The story sounded like a well-practiced tale. She suspected Agent Ward had told it dozens of times, to impress his friends and the women he dated.

  She was not impressed.

  Finally, they parked in front of Lionel’s home. It was in a poor neighborhood, and most of the homes had simple, rotting picket fences or sagging barbed wire around their yard. Lionel’s house was surrounded by a six-foot-tall stone wall, which made it stand out. The wall almost completely blocked the view of the house from the street.

  Hannah had heard that the entire street had pitched in to pay for the wall.

  Clint stepped out of the car and stared at the wall. “Is this his house?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a big wall.”

  “I guess he likes his privacy,” Hannah said, knowing very well that it was the exact opposite. The neighbors wanted Lionel to have his privacy. Lionel didn’t give a damn, a
nd in fact was probably upset about the wall being there.

  “Okay, let’s go talk to him.”

  “Sure, but listen—this is important. Don’t spook him.”

  “I’m sorry?” Clint stared at her, looking confused.

  “He gets skittish when he’s spooked. He might bolt.”

  “Okay.” Clint raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure what you’re telling me here. There’s a sex offender in that house. He might know something about the missing girl. And you want me to… what? Talk nicely? So I don’t hurt his feelings?”

  “Yeah, but we don’t want him to run away, because—”

  “Detective, we need to get answers! I’m not going to sugarcoat everything I say just to avoid a possible physical incident!”

  Hannah grinned. “You’re totally right,” she said. “I’ll follow your lead.”

  Clint went to the front gate, which was as tall as the wall. He tried the handle, and the wooden gate opened.

  “What’s the point of this huge wall if the gate is unlocked?” he asked.

  Hannah shrugged.

  The yard was barren, just hard dirt and some flagstones acting as a path to the front door. The house had uncommonly large windows, and Hannah could see movement through one of them. Lionel was home.

  Ward knocked on the door. After a moment it opened.

  Hannah knew what to expect, and watched Clint’s face as his eyes widened, his mouth going slack. A thin, middle-aged man stood in the doorway, his gray hair long and frazzled, his beard unkempt. He was completely nude, his penis dangling flaccidly as he looked at the agent and Hannah. He didn’t attempt to cover himself.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  Hannah waited for a second. When it seemed the agent was still struggling, she said, “Lionel, I’m Detective Shor. This is Agent Ward from the FBI.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “Can you tell us where you were yesterday between eight and ten in the evening?” she asked

  “Why?”

  “Because we want to know.”

  “So?”

  Clint seemed to wake up from a deep slumber. “We’re investigating the disappearance of a young girl,” he said, his voice already sharp and angry.

  Hannah sighed, and let him go for it.

  “So?” Lionel said.

  “So, where were you last night?”

  “Here.”

  “Can anyone testify to that?”

  “No.”

  “Can we come in?”

  “No.”

  The agent got louder. “Mr. Cole, a young girl disappeared from a nearby park last night. Do you know anything about that? Did you perhaps see her and think she wanted to have some fun? Maybe grabbed her and—”

  “I didn't see any young guhl—”

  “You like young girls, don’t you, Lionel? You like thinking about them, touching them, fondling—”

  Lionel turned around and bolted. Hannah was already running toward the back door, knowing she wouldn’t get there in time. She was fast, but not that fast.

  He burst through the back door, his penis bouncing up and down as his legs took him dashing straight at the wall. Did he intend to jump over it? It was a difficult jump, even for—

  He leaped over it, his hands grabbing the top and pushing him upward like a naked, demented Peter Pan. Hannah grabbed at his legs but they were incredibly powerful. He kicked her away, and then he was gone.

  “Where?” she heard Clint shout. He stood in the back door, looking surprised and confused.

  “Over the wall,” Hannah spat at him. She took a few steps backward, ran and leapt into the air, crashing into the wall, the momentum carrying her to the top. She rolled over it, and landed on the other side, bending her knees, to soften the shock. She looked around, saw Lionel’s pale ass getting away as he sprinted with extraordinary speed down Falcon Drive.

  Clint landed next to her, his head turning frantically. “There!” he shouted and dashed after Lionel.

  Hannah shook her head. Idiot. An enthusiastic idiot, but an idiot nevertheless. He’d never catch up to Lionel—though she had to hand it to Clint, he was a fast runner.

  She started running toward Cardinal Drive instead. The two streets intersected, and the way to the intersection was slightly shorter via Cardinal Drive. Hopefully, she would be fast enough to cut Lionel off. Though, frankly, she was skeptical.

  Lionel Cole held the very dubious distinction of being the fastest streaker in the United States. His main hobby was running nude, and this was the reason he had so many indecent exposure and open and gross lewdness convictions in his record. The kids he had exposed himself to had simply been there when he went on one of his dashes. But there was a public outcry, because kids should not be exposed to a penis bouncing at twenty miles per hour. He had been charged with multiple cases of open and gross lewdness, and sat in prison for nine months.

  And now he was streaking again, with an FBI agent and a detective on his tail.

  Martha Fitzwilliam drove her car slowly, lost in thought, peering at the road through her thick eyeglasses. Her arthritic hands were acting up again, and she tried to ignore the pain in her fingers as she clutched the steering wheel.

  She was on her way to her book club, and she was still trying to think of something to say. Her friend Edith had chosen the book One Hundred Years of Solitude for this month’s reading, and Martha was cranky about this choice. The rest of the club preferred nice romance novels, or cozy mysteries, and Martha knew Edith had chosen the book just to make herself seem clever.

  Martha hadn’t even managed to finish it. It was a bizarre novel, full of strange, unexplainable events. When one of the characters, Remedios, inexplicably ascended into the sky, Martha shut the novel in frustration, and didn’t bother reading to the end.

  The worst of it was that, the month before, Edith had had the nerve to subvert the discussion about Martha’s choice, The Rosie Project. It was really a delightful book, funny and charming and sweet. Martha had been waiting for the club meeting all week, dying to talk about her favorite parts of the book. But five minutes into the discussion, Edith mentioned something that had happened to her while shopping for a tablecloth, and the book was forgotten.

  And now Martha had to think of something to say about One Hundred Years of Boredom. She didn’t dare talk about just the first thirty or forty pages, because then Edith would know she hadn’t read it. But the book had only gotten stranger as she progressed, until she had nothing to say except, “Well, that was a peculiar book.”

  A movement in the street ahead caught her eye. It was a man, running down the street, wearing a strange beige running suit. He was moving very fast, and Martha hit the brakes, afraid he might suddenly jump in front of her car. He appeared to be in a race with another man, dressed much more formally. She looked at them, transfixed, as they got closer to her car. There was something strange about the leading man’s suit.

  It wasn’t a suit. He was naked.

  “Oh my,” she said to no one in particular. She squinted, just to be sure, but there was no way around it: he was definitely completely naked.

  Martha had seen three grown men naked in her entire life. Her husband George, her son (she’d accidentally barged into the bathroom when he was getting out of the shower), and once, in a very modern ballet, one of the dancers took off his clothes in the middle of the dance. Now, just like that time at the ballet, the blood rushed to her head and she felt slightly dizzy. She thought she should avert her eyes, but it was as if her body refused to respond to her will.

  The naked man reached her car and stopped. He laughed—a happy, carefree laugh—and jumped three times in his spot, his penis moving with him, rising as he fell, dropping as he rose. Then he leaped, his feet landing on the hood of her car. She could now only see his legs and the tip of his penis, which was outrageously close to her face. He jumped once more, feet hitting the road on the other side of the car, and dashed onward.

  “FBI! Stop!”
the man who was chasing him shouted as he ran after him. He was clearly out of breath, his face bewildered. He ran in front of her car and kept chasing the naked man.

  Martha glanced in the rearview mirror. She could still see the pale bottom of the naked man as he sprinted away, getting further and further from the FBI agent.

  “Oh my,” she said again.

  She sat motionless in her car for a minute or two, and then started driving again, feeling as if she was moving in a dream. Her mouth quirked into a small smile.

  She had a very good story to tell once they started talking about One Hundred Years of Solitude.

  Hannah ran as fast as she could, cursing herself for not taking her own car instead of riding with Clint. Chasing Lionel on foot was a doomed endeavor. Clint should have gotten his car, but then again, he couldn’t have known that Lionel was such a fast runner. Of course, if he had only listened…

  She reached the intersection with Falcon Drive, and was surprised to see Lionel was still about fifty feet away. Something must have delayed him; he was slower than usual. She had a chance now. She just needed to time things right. She tensed, adrenaline pumping in her blood, her eyes watching him as he got closer and closer. He constantly glanced behind him, a wide, slightly insane grin on his face. Just a bit more… a bit more…

  She pounced, hoping she’d judged the distance correctly. Lionel turned his head, noticed her—but he was running too fast, and she was in his way. He tried to swerve around her, but it was too late. She crashed into him, and they both tumbled to the ground together.

  Lionel screamed curses at her as she pulled out her handcuffs and pulled his arms roughly behind his back. Clint caught up just as she snapped on the handcuffs. His eyes were wide, and he was breathing like a heavy smoker.