by Kate Merrill
The child even ate like a bird, looking up at her through the wide blue eyes of an infant. When he cried she sang her special lullaby and cuddled him close in their tight little nest.
But the next time Leona woke up, Darryl was standing over the bed.
“Me and Floyd’s going out,” he said. “I see you ain’t fixed that boy’s hair yet. Floyd’ll be pissed if it ain’t done when we get back.”
“Where are you going?” The sudden flood of light hurt her eyes as she reared up on her elbows and stared at her husband.
“It stinks like shit in here.” He wouldn’t look her in the eye.
“I asked you a question, Darryl. Where are you going?”
He sighed and flopped down on the bed beside her and Bird. “I’m sorry, darlin’, can’t see no harm in telling you. Me and Floyd’s looking for a different car. We’ll take the Chevy back and find something new.”
“We ain’t got money for no car.”
“We ain’t planning to buy a frigging Cadillac. Anything along the road will do, so long as nobody asks questions.”
“Like Mr. Johnson don’t ask questions?” Leona had heard Floyd talk about this motel, Johnson’s Hideaway, in the past. He bragged how he brought his girlfriends here when he got the urge, how Mr. Johnson didn’t tell tales out of school. Point was, Leona never imagined she’d set foot in this fleabag herself.
Darryl reached across her body and squeezed her breast. “Can’t say I enjoy sleeping out there on the sofa. Come this weekend, we’ll be living in style. I promise, Leona.”
She pulled away and inched closer to the boy. “This weekend? Did you set up a meeting? Are we getting the money?”
Darryl swung his boots off the counterpane and sat on the edge of the bed. “Floyd’s still dragging his tail. He won’t make another call ʼtil after the TV news. So far, the kid’s parents haven’t gone to the police, but Floyd figures if they break that promise, we’ll hear about it on the evening news.” Darryl lit a cigarette and moved to the door. “A storm’s coming…” He eyed her cautiously. “Now I know you hate thunder and lightning, but I need to lock this door. Be a brave girl, Leona, and you ‘ll be all right.”
But she was not all right. The thunder came again and again. The bed lights blinked off, then they came on again. After that, the alarm clock on the table flashed over and over, and the song she was singing died in her throat.
She hugged Bird so tight he made a little chirping sound and tried to pull away. She buried her face in his hair, but it still smelled funny, like the peroxide from the bottle. Doing his hair had wrung the strength clean out of her. When she propped him over the sink, his head dangling like a broken doll’s, she had somehow managed to snip away his bangs and cut off the hair around his little ears. The bleaching was the hard part, but now he looked real cute. Lying there on the pillow, he was her own true Baby Bird, with fuzz the color of the blond duck down she remembered from all her dreams.
When the men came back, they dropped another box of chicken into the bedroom and forget to lock the door after. Leona was still too queasy to eat, and Birdwas dead to the world, so she listened through the door to Gospel music blaring from Floyd’s radio. The music was a sure sign Floyd was hitting the bottle real hard, so she decided to stay put where she was safe.
When the thunder stopped, Leona figured it was safe to visit the bathroom and answer a call of nature. On the way, she eased back the drape and saw the evening sun breaking through the clouds behind the neon motel sign. The cracked pavement in the wet parking lot glistened real pretty, almost like a rainbow.
As she watched, one eye to the crack in the drapes, she recognized Darryl’s boots crossing the concrete. He walked to where a rusted old blue station wagon was parked. The car sagged on one side. It had no hubcaps and a web of masking tape held together a crack in the side window. Darryl was right: it was no frigging Cadillac.
Her husband bent onto one knee and changed the clunker’s license plate, a game she’d seen Floyd play many times. Floyd’s collection of tags was a family joke. They stopped at junkyards, garage sales---anyplace Floyd was likely to find an old tag. This particular one for the old blue wagon was from Tennessee. Its letters and numbers were rusted so bad God Himself couldn’t read them.
Suddenly Darryl turned back towards the motel and stared at her window. Leona let the drape drop real fast and scampered into the bathroom. When she came out, something was different. She heard silence. Floyd had turned his radio off. Seconds later, the TV came on:
The evening news.
Time for Bird’spills. Since Leona hadn’t decided whether or not to give him the next dose, she figured she’d put her ear to the door and listen a spell. She heard some familiar music, but when the voices came on, they were so muffled she couldn’t hear a thing.
“Son of a bitch!” Floyd’s voice roared through the door loud and clear.
“Jesus Christ!” So did Darryl’s.
Leona twisted the doorknob open a crack. She saw a pretty dark-haired woman and a scrawny man on the TV screen. They were crying and holding up a photo of little Johnny, but they were calling the child by a different name. Leona reckoned these two were Bird’s parents, but they didn’t look rich at all, and they weren’t the folks she’d seen in the framed pictures at the Open House. All the same, they were pleading with the television audience to help find their boy.
“Shit, I don’t believe it!” Her husband turned up the volume.
Leona’s mouth went dry and her throat ached. Something had gone real wrong. She quietly closed the door and pushed the deadbolt home. She hated locking herself in when every instinct told her to cut and run, but she had the boy to consider.
Whatever bad news was coming out of the TV, it would soon come back at her. She had best get gone. But where? She crawled across the floor and searched under the drapes for a latch, but the window was solid glass. She remembered a small vent in the bathroom. It was just big enough to pass Bird through, but if she did that, he’d just drop into the weeds and lie there.
The violence beyond the door got louder. Floyd started hollering religious curses and somebody toppled a chair. Next a hideous crash silenced the TV, and Leona whimpered in fear. She gathered the limp child into her arms and carried him towards the bathroom, hoping to put yet another lock between themselves and danger. But before she reached the door, the shattering of wood dropped her to her knees.
Darryl fell shoulder first into the room. He staggered to his feet, a stunned expression on his face. But it was the sight of Floyd that stopped her cold. His devil eyes were bleeding with insanity.
“Step aside, bitch!” Floyd slurred, a broken whiskey bottle in his hand. “I aim to killthat boy!”
TWENTY-THREE
The specter of inhumanity…
Beaufort Miller leaned over the drinking fountain.
“Hey, Beaufort, rumor has it the old man pulled the plug on you.” Special Agent Carla Williams sneaked up from behind and pounded Bo on the back, nearly ramming his teeth against the spigot.
Bo stood uprigh
t, wiping water off his chin with the back of his hand. “Say what?”
“C’mon, Bo, you sound too ethnic to field the incoming leads. Grim Reaper’s doing the job himself.”
“You’re right, soul sistah, but I don’t see you answering the phones, either.”
She flashed a brilliant smile. It was a long- standing joke at the Agency that Bo and his female African American counterpart liked to dishslang that put certain white clients off. The notion was good for a laugh, or two at best.
Carla’s intelligent eyes sparked behind her glasses. Everyone at Headquarters had tried to hook them up, but Bo kept resisting. Carla’s neat little figure was enough to make a strong man weep, but she possessed double Bo’s brainpower. If he weren’t such an idiot, he’d make peace with his own inadequacies and marry her tomorrow.
Carla trailed him down the hall to his office. “But is it true?” She pressed. “Did Max really take you off the hotline?”
Carla was in charge of Public Relations. She answered concerned citizen’s questions about the FBI and closely monitored the branch’s publicity. Last night she had directed Bobby and Juanita’s television appeal, but it was Supervisory Special Agent Maxfield Grim, the humorless veteran known as SSA Grim Reaper, who directed them all.
Bo paused at his door. “Yeah, but Max was right this time. Most folks calling in want to talk to the parents, and let’s face it, I don’t sound anything like Bobby or Juanita.”
“And Max does?”
“Maybe a distant uncle?” Bo laughed. “But really, I’m okay with it,” he lied. If he had his way, Bo would field each and every response to the TV appeal, but it was out of his hands.
Carla didn’t buy it. She knew how much the Juan McCord case meant to him, but she had the grace to let it go. “Okay, but what does happen if the kidnapperscall and ask to speak to the parents?”
“No problem. We’re patched into the Porter house, so Max can switch the call without missing a beat.”
“And the kidnappers won’t hear the transfer?”
“No way.”
She squeezed his arm, trying to encourage him as he grappled with his disappointment. She lingered, hoping for an invitation into his office, but Bo was not in the mood. He suffered only a small pang of regret when she finally left, and then he barricaded himself inside. He sank into his chair overlooking a busy Charlotte intersection and waited for the two aspirins he swallowed at the drinking fountain to work their magic. No such luck. The broadcast had put him and everyone associated with the case through an emotional wringer.
He shucked off his jacket and stowed his weapon in a desk drawer. Loosening his tie, Bo switched on the little portable fan on his file cabinet and tried to focus. His second-story corner office was considered prime, a reward for surviving six years in the agency, but in summer it felt more like a punishment. Sunshine streamed through the windows, heating the place like a pizza oven, and those windows were sealed tighter than the lips of the CIA.
The location of the thermostat regulating the building was also guarded like a government secret, so that all agents were forced to conform to some national standard devised by a sadist who worked elsewhere.
Screw it. Bo leaned forward on his elbows and listened to the muffled rattle of jackhammers drifting up from the street. The concrete roadway out front had been torn up forever, with swarms of hard-hats climbing in and out of the subterranean pits like ants in a web of yellow construction tape. Either the city of Charlotte had a major problem with their water and sewer lines, or this was a giant conspiracy and the guys working below were really radical Muslim terrorists planting dirty bombs under the FBI building.
Bo sighed, closed his eyes, and tilted his face at the fan. At thirty-six, maybe he was too old for all this? He had no friends and his social life was a disaster. The women he dated were initially attracted to the romance and danger of his career, but when he told the last girl about his special training for CASKU, she had to ask: Yeah? What does that stand for? When he explained: Child Abuse and Serial Killer Unit, she nearly choked on her wine.
Even if a woman could deal with the more gruesome aspects of his job, it was just a matter of time until she discovered his true nature. Dealing with the dark side, the unspeakable horror of the criminal mind, fed Bo’s dark side, too. It was perversely alluring, a drug injected against his will, but addictive all the same.
His boss, Grim Reaper, had OD’d long ago. The man could retire, and yet he hung on. By now Max was numb to the specter of inhumanity that had caused three divorces and had finally become his bride.
Did Bo really want that for himself? He rubbed his eyes, then opened them wide. This kid, Juan McCord, was getting to him big time. Bo hadn’t suffered the old nightmare for weeks, but last night the three-year-old girl came again. Her naked body was mutilated beyond recognition, and then abandoned in a warehouse. She had been his case, but Bo had come too late to save her.
It could happen again. He broke into a sweat, but he pushed the panic aside and picked up his phone. By now Keener’s vehicle search should be complete. The chief himself answered…
“We have close to one thousand white Malibus in our area. One third are owned by young couples matching the description Diana Rittenhouse gave us, but short of a door-to-door search, and then a line up long enough to fill the Panther’s stadium, I don’t see how we can narrow this thing down. Sorry, Bo.”
“What about the interviews from the Open House?”
“Nothing. No one remembers seeing either of the kids or the country girl. End of story.”
Bo shared Jay Keener’s frustration. “Did you check the stolen vehicles report?”
“Yeah, but we hit the wall. All white Malibus are present and accounted for.”
They agreed to stay in touch, but as Keener hung up, Bo sensed the chief had exhausted his options. He dialed the central switchboard. “Can you connect me with Henry?”
The operator giggled. “Sure, Bo, but if you wait ten seconds, you’ll see him yourself. He just galloped past with his tail on fire, and he’s heading for your office.”
Bo’s heart thudded with hope. The horse metaphor for SA Henry Morse was right on target. The senior programmer should have been put out to pasture long ago, but the guy was a genius. The original nerd, Henry was building computers in the playpen before anyone else in America could even spell the word.
He burst into Bo’s office, his long, equine face leading. “You were right, Beaufort!” Henry slapped a printout down on the desk. “The white Chevy Malibu was a rental, and the dumb fuck leased it from Rent-A-Wreckin Huntersville, only a few miles from the abduction site.”
“Good work, Henry.” Bo snatched the report. “It says the guy rented the vehicle last Friday, then turned it in yesterday afternoon. The timing fits.”
“And check out the mileage…” Henry grinned through long yellow teeth. “Asshole put less than three hundred miles on the car in a five-day period, so this wasn’t your average traveling salesman. He’s local. You’d think the moron would spring for some gas and run it out, just to put us off track.”
Bo frowned at Henry. So far he had called the kidnapper a dumb fuck, an asshole, and a moron. Although Bo wanted to embrace those theories, in his experience, criminals were seldom as clueless as they seemed.
“That means the kid is still in the neighborhood!” Henry was on a roll.
Bo shook his head. “Or maybe the kidnappers pulled the Chevy into a private garage, transferred the kid into a van, and then drove him to Alaska? Anyone could have returned the rental.”
“Nope, the same jerk who rented it, also turned it in. It’s all in my report.”
Bo was losing patience. Henry was not authorized to conduct interviews with car rental agents or anyone else. He was a designated search engine, nothing more. Only experienced field agents, skilled in interrogation methods, were permitted direct access to witnesses. Too often a witness’s memory was as fleeting as quicksilver, and the wrong questions
could distort it altogether.
“Can you give me a verbal briefing?” Bo snapped.
“The man who rented the car is Horace Waddell, comes from a big family in these parts. The rental clerk said the creep was medium height with a small, wiry build. He was thirty-some years old, and get this---pale with a scaracross his mouth, long black hair in a ponytail, and dark, beady, mean-lookingeyes.”
“Jesus, Henry, the clerk actually said that?”
“Yes, sir, word for word.”
“Maybe your witness has been watching too many gangster movies? Besides, the man Mrs. Rittenhouse described driving the car was big and blond. What about that?”
“The agent said there was another loser outside waiting to drive for Horace, maybe a blond guy.”
“Did the agent check Mr. Waddell’s driver’s license?”
“Yep. The photo ID was a match.”
“Can you get me a copy of the photo?”
“Sure, the agent has it on a disc. He promised to e-mail it within the hour.”
Bo’s anger faded. Maybe Henry was onto something after all. “Naturally, you arranged to impound the car?”
“Sorry, Beaufort…” Henry backed towards the door. “I insisted, of course, but it was too late. The Malibu had been leased again. It’s out on the road.”
“Damn! Then reel it back in, Henry!” Bo saw a treasure trove of fingerprints obliterated for all time, but if they were lucky, a company called Rent-A-Wreckmight not give their vehicles a meticulous wipe-down between customers. “Plug Horace Waddell into VICAP and the SBI computers in Raleigh. If this lead is for real, I want to know everything about him.”
“Like what he ate for breakfast, sir?” Henry teased. “And I suppose you want this yesterday?”
Bo gave Henry a look of cross-eyed incredulity as his headache returned with a vengeance.