Lost and Found

by Margaret Lake

  “Right. But we can use that as a bargaining chip. Let them know that we could arrest them on a weapons charge …”

  “Not to mention shooting Officer Gordon,” Paul interrupted.

  “I think we’ll hold that in reserve. Maybe let them think that Gordon isn’t going to make it.”

  “Is he going to make it?” Paul asked. They hadn’t had an update in several hours.

  “We’ll ask Chief when he comes in. Gordon’s one of his so he’ll be up to date on his condition,” Kevin told him.

  “So, what’s all this soft soap going to get us?”

  “As much info about the operation as we can flim-flam out of them. Once we’ve got them talking, a little quiet menace never hurt.”

  “Especially the name of the shot caller.”

  “If they know, which I doubt. But maybe they can lead us to someone who does know and then we can lean on that guy. I think the higher up we go, the closer we’ll get to who killed the Marsh Man.”

  “The what, now?” Paul asked, momentarily at a loss.

  “The guy they found in the marsh. Don’t you read the papers?”

  “Yeah, but …”

  “That’s what the Bankston Daily called him. He’s probably the one that the third man said had disappeared.”

  “I hear them coming,” Paul told Kevin.

  “Chief, all of you, great job,” Kevin told them, shaking everyone’s hand. “Can we meet for a minute in your office, Andy?”

  “Sure.”

  As soon as they’d crowded in, Paul shut the door behind them. “How’s Gordon?”

  “He’s out of surgery and in recovery. They’re keeping a close eye on him. He could have bled out, but his vitals look good.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Kevin smiled. “Look, I know you guys have to be anxious to sit in on the interrogation, but Paul and I work as a team.”

  “No problem,” Andy nodded.

  “Good. And if you don’t mind, I’d like you to sit just outside the door and listen in. Make a note of anything that seems off to you or anything you think we should have asked but didn’t.”

  “I can do that,” Andy agreed, happy to have even a small role in the follow-up.

  “Forbes, Carter, I want you stationed by the cells right where the other guy can see you. He’s pretty scared right now and he might just talk to you.”

  “Got it. Anything we should be asking him?” Forbes asked.

  “No, just listen. If he asks any questions, just say you don’t know.”

  “Okay, we can handle that,” Carter told Kevin.

  “Scott, there’s a little alcove by the cells. Would you mind sitting there where the prisoner can’t see you and make a note of anything he says, no matter how trivial you think it is?”

  “No problem. Takes me back to my sergeant days.”

  “Okay, let’s go, but don’t take down anything until we mirandize them. We haven’t officially charged them yet. In fact, we haven’t even let them tell us their names. This is too important to let anything slip by us.”

  “Do you think they’ll ask for lawyers?” Scott asked.

  “You never know. But if they do, they’ll have to wait until the court can appoint one for them. They don’t look like they have a dime between them. That means we have to wait so we’re going to do our best to get them to waive a lawyer being present at this time.”

  “Isn’t that a little chancy?” Scott frowned.

  “Not if we handle it right and that’s partly why we haven’t officially charged them yet.”

  “Okay. You’re the boss,” Scott agreed.

  After mirandizing the prisoner in the cell … and as Kevin had hoped, he didn’t ask for a lawyer … Corwin and Brown headed for the conference room to mirandize the second suspect.

  Paul took a small cassette recorder from his pocket, ejecting the tape he’d used to mirandize the first suspect, when they’d finally asked him to identify himself. Harley Ferris was more than happy to give his name and immediately started to babble about how innocent he was. The agents assured him he’d get his turn to speak and then turned their backs on Ferris, leaving him alone with the officers. Chief Patterson might be hearing some very interesting things.

  Paul slipped in a new tape under the watchful eye of the second suspect who, Kevin noticed, was licking dry lips.

  Paul turned on the recorder, and went through the usual testing, testing, one, two, three, but the sound of his voice made the prisoner nearly jump out of his skin. There’d been too much silence.

  Paul played back the tape, and when he was satisfied that the recorder was working properly, rewound it to the beginning.

  Paul identified himself for the tape followed by Kevin’s voice giving his name, the date and time.

  “We are interrogating a suspect in the taking of elderly hostages at 14 Rural Route 1, outside of the City of Joseph, Banks County.”

  Kevin paused, giving his opening statement a moment to sink in. “State your full name for the record, sir.”

  The man jumped again, surprised to be asked a question. “Uh, Ronnie … I mean, Ronald Ferris,” he said, clearing his throat.

  “Would you like some water, Mr. Ferris?” Paul asked, giving Ferris a slight smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Yeah. I mean, yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Paul walked over to the cooler in the corner and filled a cup with cold water. He was glad of an excuse to turn his back on Ronnie. The man was trying so hard to be polite, it was all Paul could do not to grin.

  “Here you are, Mr. Ferris. Take your time, now. You don’t want to choke.” Paul could be just as polite as good old boy Ronnie was, but he’d bet his last dollar that it wouldn’t be long before the man reverted to type and either started cussing up a blue streak or got just plain stubborn.

  “For the tape,” Kevin said, “Agent Corwin brought Ronald Ferris a drink of water from the cooler in the corner of this room.”

  Ferris’ eyes swiveled back to Kevin. All this polite chit-chat for the tape recorder didn’t sound like any of the cop shows he’d ever watched.

  “Mr. Ferris, are you related to Mr. Harley Ferris?” Kevin continued.

  “He’s m’ cuzzin.”

  “And that’s how you happened to be together in that house? The house where the police officers found you?” Paul asked, pulling the man’s attention back to him.

  “Uh-huh. Harley and me … well, you oughtta know,” he replied, starting to get defensive.

  Kevin reached down to the chair beside him and pulled up a file. He’d already gotten preliminary reports on both prisoners. Nothing too serious. They both had juvie records. Probably ran together back in the day. Then there were a couple of DUIs apiece and driving without a license.

  Brown took his time reading the file, then leaned over to point something out to Corwin. Right on cue, Paul glanced down at the paper as if reading something terrible, then raised his eyebrows at his partner.

  “See what I mean?” Kevin said.

  “Yeah.” Paul looked up at Ronnie, then back down at the file, shaking his head.

  “What you got there?” Ferris asked, losing some of his belligerence.

  “Oh, just some reports on you and your cousin and the kind of folks you hang around with.”

  Ferris paled at that. How in hell had this city guy found out about the cars that stupid Lucius had been jacking?

  “Ain’t got nothin’ to do with me. Harley neither,” he protested.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Kevin said casually, “but this is just a preliminary report. We will find out. You know that, don’t you.”

  “Lissen here, Mr. FBI Agent …”

  “That’s Agent Brown, to you,” Kevin said, speaking sharply for the first time.

  “Okay, okay. Didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” Ferris said hastily. “I was just meanin’ t’ tell ya’ that me and Harley got legitimate jobs.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about those jobs,” Kevin said softly
.

  “Well, we was looking after those old folks, and let me tell you, that weren’t no easy thing to do.”

  “And why is that, Mr. Ferris?”

  “They ain’t got all their marbles, have they. You saw ’em. You know.”

  “Yes, we saw them,” Kevin murmured.

  “We tried to feed ’em, but they wouldn’t eat nothin’ that we knew how to cook. And we wasn’t gettin’ all the supplies that we needed, so we started huntin’ squirrels, and foraging around the old farm for some carrots and things that might still be growing out there.”

  “And did you find anything?”

  “Yeah, some onions, too, and some beets. And all we had to give them poor folks to drink was well water.”

  “Sounds like you had your hands full,” Paul interjected.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Ronnie said, warming to his story. “They was four of us taking care of six doing shifts. Then one guy ups and disappears on us. Musta walked out in the middle of the night cuz one morning, he just wasn’t there. Then to top it all, the guy that brings our pay drops off another six for just us three to take care of.”

  “Sounds like you were in a terrible bind,” Paul sympathized.

  “We sure was, Agent. We sure was.” Ronnie said, shaking his head and feeling sorry for himself.

  “So, is that why you decided to turn on the gas and put those poor folks out of their misery?” Kevin asked.

  Ferris was stunned. That damned Lucius musta turned them in after he run off.

  “You … uh … you know …” Suddenly Ronnie stopped talking. These suits had been so nice, so sympathetic, they’d nearly led him into confessing everything.

  “Don’t know nothin’ about that,” he muttered.

  “Lucius Ferris. Is he another cousin?” Paul asked in an almost friendly tone.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He was working with you at the farmhouse, taking care of those old people.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Now, Ronnie, why don’t you tell us how you came to be carrying rifles.”

  “I told ya’. We was shootin’ squirrels and rabbits to try to feed them poor people.”

  “Yeah, I get that,” Kevin muttered, sitting back in his chair and throwing down the file in disgust. That was Paul’s signal to take over and play good cop while he handled the quiet menace part.

  “This man that brought six more people to you, what was he driving.”

  “A black van. A big one.” Ronnie didn’t mind answering questions about someone else. Better that guy getting locked up than him.

  “Did you get a license plate, Ronnie?”

  “Naw. No reason to look.”

  “True,” Paul nodded. “Did he tell you his name?”

  “No, but lookee here. He always come alone except for when he dropped off those people. There was another guy with him, and that guy called him Ben. Boy, did that Ben guy give the skinny one a look.”

  “You’re doing good, Ronnie,” Paul smiled. “You can describe these two, can’t you?”

  “Sure. The one that drove the van. He was big. Over six foot. Lots of black hair coming kind of low down to his eyes. Black eyes, too. Big nose. Big mouth. Weighed maybe 250, 260.”

  “Good. And the skinny one?”

  “Young, long wheat colored hair, hangin’ over his shoulders. Didn’t catch his eyes. Only saw him the onct. But he was tall, too. Maybe an inch or two less than the driver.”

  “Skinny, though, right?”

  “Yeah. Skinny. Pasty skin, too, like he didn’t eat right. Maybe had one o’ them … whaddya call ’em … eatin’ problems.”

  “You mean an eating disorder? Like anorexia?” Paul asked.

  “Yeah. That’s it.”

  Paul continued the interrogation while Kevin stepped to the side of the room to take a call. He came back not a minute later, nodding to Paul to continue.

  “How did you get paid, Ronnie?”

  “That Ben guy brung cash ever Friday, but he always held a little back. Yanno, so we’d stick around.”

  “Sounds like a difficult job, Ronnie. Guess they paid you well.”

  “Nah. But things is tough at home, yanno. Harley and Lucius’ families live with us, too, and there’s young’uns to be fed.”

  “How’d you find this job, then? Did you read it in the newspaper?”

  “Ben came around. Said he knew where we could make some money doin’ honest work and he paid cash. Us three signed up and he gave the folks a hundred bucks apiece for us.”

  “So, you went to work and …”

  “And nothin’. We was there a couple of months when Ben doubled us up and then all hell broke loose, with that other guy gone and then Lucius runnin’ out the door, and you guys showin’ up. We was scared out of our minds, I tell ya’!”

  “Is that why you shot Officer Gordon?” Kevin shouted, banging his hand on the table.

  Ferris would have jumped to his feet if his hand hadn’t been cuffed to the table leg. “No, no,” he shouted back, clearly terrified. “That was Harley. He’s always been kinda nervy. He’ll tell ya’. He won’t try to pin it on me.”

  “Alright, Mr. Ferris,” Kevin said in a normal tone. “We’ll be asking him.

  “Paul, why don’t you uncuff Mr. Ferris. He looks uncomfortable. Maybe take him to the men’s room and then get him a cup of coffee.”

  “Hey! Ain’t I under arrest?”

  “We’ll be pressing charges soon. But in the meantime, we want to treat you as kindly as you treated those seniors in your care.”

  Paul noticed that last sentence was enough to turn old Ronnie quite pale.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was over an hour before Charlie was moved to ICU and they let the Gordons in to see him. Cindy and Mia got to go in because Cindy was married to Chief Sutherland and Mia was the late fire chief’s daughter. Everyone had a lot of respect for both men.

  The nurse in charge stopped them before they went in. “Mr. and Mrs. Gordon, you can go on in, but Officer Gordon is very weak and very tired. You can’t stay long.”

  “We understand,” Laurie nodded, anxious to see her son. She and Charles practically tiptoed in and stood silently beside Charlie’s bed, holding his hands, careful of the IVs.

  “Mom, Dad, sorry about this. I don’t like to worry you,” Charlie croaked.

  “That’s what parents do, son,” Charles smiled. “Someday, you’ll know. From the minute they lay your child in your arms, you start worrying and you don’t ever stop.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Charlie whispered. “And you’ve got a bunch after me to worry about, too.”

  Mia could see Charlie lying on the bed through the large window. It seemed to her that his face was as white as the sheets that covered him. And it was upsetting to see his mother, trying to look brave when Mia knew her heart had to be broken into pieces.

  “Laurie, let’s let Cindy and Mia see Charlie for a little bit. Might do him good to see faces besides his old mom and dad.”

  “Mia’s here?” Charlie asked, trying to raise himself up. The last thing he wanted was for her to see him like this … all weak and helpless, tubes running from both arms and oxygen stuck up his nose.

  “Yes, Charlie, Mia’s here along with her mother.” Laurie heard the tone of his voice and saw the struggle to get up and her maternal radar started blipping. Biting her lip, she looked up at her husband, wondering if he’d noticed. But Charles was already out the door, asking Mia and Cindy to come in.

  “It’s okay, Charlie,” Laurie whispered. “You’re a hero and that’s all she’ll see.” Straightening the covers, Laurie left, winking at Cindy as she passed.

  Cindy wondered why the wink but decided to take it as a sign that Charlie was doing well.

  “Officer Gordon,” Cindy said with mock severity, “Chief Sutherland says you can have the rest of the day off, but he won’t tolerate malingering. You’re to report for duty tomorrow. Regular shift.”

  “Mom!�
�� Mia squeaked. “What are you doing? Can’t you see …”

  “I’ve got eyes, haven’t I?” Cindy responded, blithely. “Besides, everyone coming into the man’s room for the next week is going to ask him, ‘How are you feeling?’ Well, look at him, Mia. Anybody with one eye and half a brain can see how he’s feeling.”

  Mia did look at him, and when he grinned weakly at her, she knew he was going to be alright.

  “How are … ooops! Almost put my foot in it, didn’t I, Officer Gordon,” Mia grinned back.

  All Charlie knew was that when his fingers started tingling at the sight of Mia this time, he didn’t mind one single bit.

  “We’d better let your parents back in,” Cindy said. “But we’ll be back tomorrow when you’re more chipper.”

  “Feeling pretty chipper right now,” Charlie whispered, looking at Mia.

  And then Cindy knew why Laurie had winked at her and she couldn’t be more pleased. Now if only her stubborn, career-minded, workaholic daughter felt the same.

  They’d just said goodbye to the Gordons when Mia heard her name and turned to see Ashley hurrying toward her.

  “Mia, what are you doing here?” Ashley asked, slightly breathless. “It isn’t Michael, is it?”

  “No, Ash. It’s Officer Gordon. Remember the guy who was guarding our house that day?”

  “Oh, no. What happened to him?”

  “He got shot in the line of duty,” Mia whispered, trying not to disturb the other patients. She didn’t know how much they were allowed to say about what was happening, and Mia didn’t really have any up-to-date information anyway. They’d all have to get it on the six o’clock news.

  “Ash, I don’t think you’ve met my mother. Mom, this is Ashley Caron. She’s the dress designer who will be sharing the Victorian with me and Jessica.”

  “So nice to meet you, Mrs. …”

  “Sutherland,” Cindy told her before this pretty young lady could call her Mrs. Broderick. “But you can call me Cindy. I hope whoever you are visiting here is on the mend.”

  “Oh, yes. She’s doing much better, thank you. She’s my … I mean … she’s the Jane Doe that was found on the porch of the house we’ll be moving in to and my grandmother and I have sort of adopted her.” Ashley hoped that information would be sufficient to keep Mia’s mom from asking too many questions. They wanted to keep Julie’s real identity secret for as long as possible.