EIGHT
MILT
‘What do you mean?’ Clovis Pettigrew asked me. She looked from me to her son-in-law to my wife. ‘Are you telling me my grandson’s been kidnapped?’
‘Yes, Ma’am,’ I said, feeling even worse about it now, standing in front of this Mighty Dog of a woman, than I had earlier, if that was at all possible.
‘All right, Sheriff. Let’s see if I can get this straight,’ she said, squaring her shoulders and bringing her body up to its full height of five foot nothing. ‘My son’s been missing since Thursday night, and, let’s let our hair down here, Sheriff: you’ve got no idea where my boy is. Now you’re telling me my four-year-old grandson has been kidnapped. Is this correct?’
‘Yes, Ma’am,’ I said.
She turned to look at her son-in-law. ‘Where’s Mary Ellen?’
Hoisting up his two-year-old higher on his hip, Rodney Knight said, ‘I wish I knew.’
Clovis Pettigrew turned to me. ‘My son, my grandson and my daughter?’
I held up my hands in self-defense. ‘I got nothing to do with that!’
‘She asked me to watch Eli because she had a family emergency,’ Jean told Miz Pettigrew. Jean was sitting on the couch, flanked on one side by her business partner, Anne Louise, and on the other by their secretary, DeSandra.
‘And you did such a fine job of helping out,’ Dalton’s mama said sarcastically.
Jean opened her mouth and looked at me, then closed it. Jean’s a bit above getting defensive, although Clovis Pettigrew could bring out the worst in just about anybody. DeSandra, who must have somehow figured out that Miz Pettigrew’s comment was less than flattering to Jean, jumped to her feet.
She got out, ‘Listen here, you little freak—’ before Jean and Anne Louise managed to wrestle her back down to the couch. Anne Louise clamped her hand over DeSandra’s mouth, so that all that came out was ‘ah ha arrg ah,’ which was a little less offensive than what the girl had had in mind.
Shooting a glare at all three women sitting on the couch and crossing her arms over her chest, Miz Pettigrew turned back to me. ‘So tell me what you’re doing so I can fix it.’
I sighed. To hell with it, I thought. If she can fix it, more power to her. ‘We did a search of the area before the ransom call,’ I said. ‘Now we got Police Chief Smith here with equipment to record and trace any more calls that come in from the kidnapper. And I got an APB out on both Dalton’s and Mary Ellen’s cars.’
‘So basically, y’all are just standing around with your thumbs up your be-hinds.’ Then Miz Pettigrew nodded her head. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Sounds adequate.’ Turning to her son-in-law, she said, ‘Rodney, give me Junior and you go look for your wife.’
Rodney handed over his son and said, ‘Where do you suggest I look, Mama Clovis?’
‘Well, start back at your house. Then call Clary Swain, see if she’s heard from her . . .’
‘Clary Swain? Mama Clovis, Mary Ellen hasn’t talked to her since high school,’ Rodney said.
‘Humph. Well, who’s her best friend now?’ she asked.
Rodney just stared at her, then said, ‘Well, I dunno. Me?’
Miz Pettigrew hiked the two-year-old up on one skinny hip and said, ‘Humph, I doubt it.’
HOLLY
Holly figured their best bet was to get to a road, but the only way this city girl knew how to do that was to get to the driveway leading to the barn and follow that back to the road. The only problem was that the big barn door was open wide and stared directly at the driveway. How could she get the boy to the driveway and down to the road without being seen by Mr Smith?
Looking at the sky, she noted that the moon was doing its crescent-shaped thing, which did light up the ground a little bit, but there were clouds rolling in the sky also, and they covered the moon every once in a while, darkening the world around her. But she guessed she couldn’t count on cloud cover for the entire length of the driveway, especially while dragging a four-year-old with breathing problems along with her. She found herself grinning. God, she thought. I sound just like a commando! Under her breath, she said out loud, ‘Holly Humphries, Girl Commando! Coming to a theater near you!’
‘Huh?’ Eli said, looking up at her, his mouth open in an attempt to get as much air into his little lungs as possible.
Holly shook her head. ‘Nothing, honey,’ she said, tousling his hair.
‘We need to go,’ Eli whined. ‘I want my mommy.’
Holly sighed. ‘I know you do, honey.’ She scoped out the territory, just like Holly Humphries, Girl Commando would do. The tree line came up close to the driveway. There weren’t a lot of trees in front of the barn, but if they darted from one to the other, they could still follow the driveway to the road and have some shelter from the moonlight.
‘OK, Eli, hold onto my hand. We’re going to move fast from tree to tree but follow the driveway to the road, OK?’
He nodded his head and they began to move. They’d gone no more than five or six steps when bright light engulfed them.
‘There you are!’ Mr Smith shouted, shining a large flashlight and catching them like deer in headlights, an unfamiliar expression to both city girl Holly and Chicago-bred ‘Smith’.
Holly grabbed Eli, looked behind her at the vast nothingness of the dense trees behind the barn and turned in that direction. Run! she thought to herself and took off.
JEAN’S STORY
My meeting with Melinda Hayes’s secretary really didn’t get me very far. I knew in my heart that Emil Hawthorne had had an affair with Melinda, but unless she admitted it and pressed charges, my knowledge and two dollars wouldn’t buy me a biscotti. I had one day to do my sleuthing, and it was already ten a.m. I went to my car and sat in the driver’s seat, picking up the second file.
Missy Mason, twenty-two, suffered from severe scoliosis and wore braces from the hips down and walked with crutches. There was a little part of me that felt a faint jolt of superiority – my braces were only on my calves. I leaned back against the headrest, totally disgusted with myself as the thought truly registered. Then the thought also registered that braces up to the hips might be too much trouble for Emil Hawthorne.
I flipped to the next patient, LeeLee Novotny, who was legally blind. It took a moment for me to realize that I’d done the math wrong when I first pulled this patient’s file. I had been looking for women twenty-five and under. LeeLee Novotny was considerably under. LeeLee was now eighteen years old, but she’d been less than that when she was seen by Dr Hawthorne. LeeLee Novotny saw him between the ages of fourteen and sixteen. Two years Emil Hawthorne could have been abusing her.
MARY ELLEN
Mary Ellen Pettigrew Knight’s depth perception wasn’t particularly good in the daylight; at night, it was downright non-existent. Her flight off the cliff into nothingness was actually a little less than the distance from the roof of a one-story house. She did a belly flop onto a grassy knoll, knocking the breath out of her, breaking her nose, her right hand pinkie finger and rendering her unconscious.
DALTON
Dalton’s feet hurt. He found a large rock next to the gravel road he had been following and sat down, lifting one foot after the other to check them. His right foot was bleeding. The only item of clothing he had on besides his too-short pants and his undershorts was the new shirt he had bought specifically for his date with ‘Sarah’. Looking at it in the paltry moonlight, he noticed it was a little the worse for wear: the right shoulder was torn and there were all sorts of stains on the front of it. He grabbed the right sleeve and pulled. Using the good Oxford cloth sleeve, he gingerly dabbed at his bleeding foot. Knowing he had to keep moving, he tied the sleeve around his bleeding foot and tried standing on it. It felt good; so good, in fact, that he tore off the other sleeve and tied it around his left foot.
Then, just for heck of it, he lifted his voice to the heavens and yelled at the top of his lungs, ‘Mary Ellen!’ He waited for about ten seconds, heard no response and continued on down the road.
HOLLY
‘What was that?’ Holly said, pulling Eli down with her to hide behind a bush.
‘Huh?’ Eli asked.
‘Did you hear something?’ she whispered to the boy.
‘Somebody yelling,’ Eli said, trying to whisper back.
They’d lost Smith and his flashlight a good five or ten minutes earlier and had been wandering ever since in what Holly hoped was a straight line.
‘That’s my mommy,’ Eli whispered.
Straining her ears for another sound from the woods, she irritably turned to the boy. ‘What?’
‘Mary Ellen,’ Eli said. ‘That’s my mommy’s name.’
‘What’s Mary Ellen?’ Holly asked, her irritability starting to show.
‘The yelling,’ Eli said, as patiently as a four-year-old could. ‘That man was yelling my mommy’s name!’
Holly’s eyes opened wide and she put her finger to her lips to quiet Eli. Then they both listened.
EMIL
Emil picked up his cell phone and dialed. When the other end was answered, he said, ‘You said this was going to be easy. Well, it’s not! They’re gone and I can’t find them and it’s not even the right kid, for God’s sake!’
He listened for a minute, starting to calm down. ‘OK, OK . . . Yes. I understand,’ he said. He smiled. ‘I love you too.’
MILT
I decided I couldn’t stay in the house any longer. So, putting Anthony in charge of ‘headquarters’, now my house atop Mountain Falls Road, I got in my Jeep and started driving. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but anywhere was better than hanging around Clovis Pettigrew. I admit to feeling a bit of shame for leaving my wife there with her, but not enough to stop me.
I called Charlie Smith on my cell phone. ‘How’s it going?’ he said when he answered, having seen my name on the caller ID, I reckoned. You just can’t sneak up on a person anymore.
‘Same-o, same-o,’ I said. ‘Except Clovis Pettigrew showed up at my house and sorta took over.’
‘That’s Dalton’s mama, huh?’ Charlie said. ‘Haven’t had the pleasure.’
‘Pleasure,’ I said, tasting the word in my mouth. ‘Not a word one would associate with Clovis Pettigrew.’
Charlie laughed. ‘I sorta heard that.’ Sobering, he said, ‘What can I do here to help?’
I shook my head. ‘Hell if I know. Come morning, I’m calling in the state police and maybe the FBI.’
‘You called in an Amber Alert?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said, probably a little testily. I mean, I’m not a total dullard. Changing the subject because I didn’t have much more in the way of news about any of my missing people, I said, ‘You know that guy you were telling me about who died cleaning the bathroom for his wife?’
‘Yeah, real shame,’ Charlie said.
‘I got to remembering I had something similar to that about fifteen years ago over in Bishop,’ I told him. ‘Lady reported her husband was unconscious, got there and he was dead as a doornail. Seemed he’d mixed Clorox and ammonia while cleaning a small half bath downstairs. No window. That’s what this was, right? Bleach and ammonia?’
‘Yeah, that’s weird. But I guess it happens. Just goes to prove that cleaning is a woman’s job,’ Charlie said and laughed.
‘No shit. But try proving that to your wife.’
‘Well, at the moment I got Luanne convinced I’m either too tired or too stupid to do anything more than play with the kids. We’ll see how long I can keep that going.’
I shook my head. Lucky bastard. That’s the thing about being married to a psychiatrist. She rarely, if ever, buys that B.S.
EMIL
He had to do something, he knew that, but he didn’t know what. Chasing that stupid girl and the boy through the woods had proved to be a little more than he could handle. Even that stupid girl had been able to either outrun or outwit him. Something else that could be laid at the feet of Jean MacDonnell. He had been very sharp eight years before. Sharp enough to have outwitted a four-year-old boy and a girl dumb enough to think she could have an acting career in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for God’s sake.
He threw his flashlight across the barn, hitting a bale of hay; the lack of breaking glass and cracking plastic did little to appease his current mood. He wanted to kill something, and he couldn’t even kill a damn flashlight.
CHARLIE
Charlie checked on the whereabouts of his officers, then sat back down and got to thinking about what Milt said. How could two men accidentally kill themselves in exactly the same way? He wondered what the statistics were on people killing themselves by mixing ammonia and bleach.
He didn’t want to go home, not with this poor little kid on the loose somewhere, but he really didn’t see what he could do to help. Maybe if he went by the sheriff’s office, he could find something to do to help out. Or maybe he could get into Milt’s records and look up that old accident.
MARY ELLEN
Mary Ellen came to. There were stars above her, a sliver of moon half-hidden by a cloud. Very pretty, she thought, as she lay there staring upward. It took a full few minutes before she began to wonder why she was laying on hard ground and looking up at the sky.
When she looked around, she realized that she was on a small, rocky precipice overlooking a much longer drop in to, as far as Mary Ellen could see in the darkness, a black abyss. Then the sounds of the waterfall penetrated her brain and she realized where she was: somewhere between the cliff and the pool of water at the bottom of the waterfall. Mary Ellen smiled. She was balanced in space, halfway between earth and Heaven.
She tried to push herself up with her right hand and groaned, landing back on the ground. Her right hand wouldn’t support her, and the pain caused by leaning on it brought a clarity to Mary Ellen’s brain that she hadn’t felt in some time. And, with that clarity, she was able to say quite clearly and succinctly, ‘Well, shit.’
DALTON
When, for the third time, he passed the tree with the knothole that looked like Richard Nixon’s profile, Dalton decided that he might be going in circles. He’d been a Boy Scout, almost made it to Eagle Scout, and normally he’d have done fine getting lost in the woods. But that was only if he had on his own pants, the ones with his keys on the key chain with the mini compass. The pants he was wearing certainly didn’t have a compass. Checking out the pockets, he found two fuzzy wintergreen Life Savers, a ticket stub to the ‘Way off Broadway’ production of Die Hard: The Musical, and what appeared to be a grocery list, consisting of bread, Boone’s Farm apple wine, cheese, Bud Light, aspirin, Ripple and Alka-Seltzer. Dalton wondered if Luther, the former owner of the pants, had a drinking problem.
He was leaning against Richard Nixon’s profile when he heard it. A slithering sound. A sneaky sound. Dalton whirled around, reaching for a sidearm that wasn’t there.
EMIL
Emil picked up his cell phone and dialed Jean’s number. She answered. ‘I decided to kill the boy. When I found out he wasn’t yours—’ he started.
‘No, please!’ she said on the other end.
‘Already done,’ Emil said. ‘Now I’m coming for your son. After that, who knows? Your husband? Who else do you love, Jean MacDonnell? I’ll be glad to kill them all!’
MILT
When I got home, all hell had broken loose. Seemed that the kidnapper had called again, but he didn’t stay on the line long enough to trace it. Jean was hysterical, sitting on the couch crying and being held by Clovis Pettigrew. Now that’s a sight I never thought I’d see. Anne Louise was on the other side of Jean, patting her back and looking ineffectual, a look not common for her. DeSandra was pacing in front of the fireplace and talking to herself.
I’d left Anthony Dobbins in charge, and he was now standing in the doorway to the living room, trying not to watch what was transpiring inside.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked him.
‘Ah, we got a call, Sheriff,’ answered Anthony.
‘The kidnapper?’ I asked, surprise evident in my voice. I really had thought that the first call was a prank.
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘What’d he say?’ I asked.
Anthony looked into the living room and didn’t say anything.
‘Anthony?’ I asked again, ‘What did the man say?’
My deputy sighed and then looked at me, more at my mouth than at my eyes. I’ve never known Anthony to not look me in the eye.
‘Anthony?’ I said again.
‘He said he killed the boy, Sheriff,’ Anthony said softly.
My gut clenched up bad. I thought I was gonna be sick. Pulling myself together, I asked, ‘Where’s the body?’
Anthony shook his head. ‘He didn’t say. He just said . . . Well, Sir, he said he was coming for your boy next. And then you. Seems he’s really got it in for your wife, Sir. He said he’d kill anyone she was close to.’
I walked into the living room and pulled Jean out of the clutches of the well-meaning women. She threw her arms around my neck and I held her like I’d never held her before. To Anthony, I said, ‘Go get my boy. Bring him down here. Then nobody goes anywhere, understand?’
‘Yes, Sir,’ Anthony said, then took the stairs two at a time.
JEAN’S STORY
LeeLee Novotny was now eighteen years old and living on campus at the University of Chicago, a campus I knew like the back of my hand, having spent almost ten years roaming its halls and greens.
The registrar had told me what dorm she was in, and her roommate had told me her class schedule. I caught up with LeeLee outside the chemistry building. There was a picture of her in Hawthorne’s psych file, and I recognized her immediately. She hadn’t changed much in the four years since the picture was taken. She was a small young woman, about five foot, two inches at the most, slight of build, maybe clocking in at 100 pounds or less. She still looked no more than the fourteen years of age she’d been when that picture was taken. Her straight white-blonde hair touched her waist and her watery blue eyes were covered with inch-thick glasses. She was wearing jeans a couple of sizes too large and a T-shirt that could have belonged to an older brother. The oversized clothes only emphasized her small frame and underage appearance.
I knew from her file that her blindness had been the psychological result of trauma as a young child. She’d seen her mother in bed with another man and, like the rock opera Tommy, she’d been told she’d seen nothing. And, from that day on, she didn’t. Dr Hawthorne had brought this out, but by the age of fourteen, the damage to the eye muscles was permanent, and even with extreme exercises she was only able to get back a bit of her sight. Looking at her now, I could only assume that the thick glasses were the positive end result of her time with Dr Hawthorne. But I wondered what else had transpired in that two-year period? Was there a negative end result as well?
‘LeeLee?’ I said, walking up to her.
She stopped and looked up at me. ‘Yes, Ma’am?’ she said, in a little squeak of a voice.
‘I wonder if you would have a minute to talk with me?’ I’d checked her schedule and knew she had an hour between classes.
‘What about?’ she asked, averting her eyes from mine.
‘Emil Hawthorne,’ I said.
Her eyes shot up toward mine and then quickly looked away. ‘I gotta get to class,’ she said, and started walking away.
‘LeeLee,’ I said, following, ‘I know you don’t have a class right now.’
‘I have to meet somebody,’ she said, her short legs moving fast, almost too fast for me on my crutches to keep up with.
‘I know what happened with Dr Hawthorne,’ I threw out.
The girl immediately stopped in her tracks. Then she burst into tears.
CHARLIE
Milt had gone home by the time Charlie got to the sheriff’s office. Gladys was still there, as well as Lonnie Sturgis, both on the phones. Charlie went back to the interrogation room, which also served as Milt’s file room. The files were never locked, unless they were holding someone for interrogation. One thing about Miss Gladys, Charlie thought, the woman does know how to run a filing system: in chronological and alphabetical order. Milt had said the case was from fifteen years back, so Charlie went back eighteen, just to be on the safe side. He had no name, so the alphabetical system didn’t do him any good. He pulled up a chair from the interrogation table and set to work.
DALTON
Dalton whirled around, toward the sound of whatever it was in the bushes, wishing like hell he had his sidearm, which was currently safe in the locked glove compartment of his car, in a parking lot somewhere in Tulsa.
He crouched by the tree and began to pray.
HOLLY
Holly and Eli snuck through the brush; Holly bent over, Eli holding her hand for dear life. Holly could feel his little body shaking as they approached the clearing from where they’d heard Eli’s mother’s name called.
Sticking their heads through the brush and into the clearing, they heard a scream. They both screamed back.