Twenty-seven

Getting out of downtown and past I-45 took a full twenty minutes, even with the siren wailing on my Tahoe. I wasn’t trying to get on the freeway, just take an underpass to cross it. With the storm coming, folks were rattled, and since little was moving, they had nowhere to go to get out of our way. Once David and I cleared the freeway, we made a beeline for the Warner home in West U, a trendy, well-heeled section of Houston near Rice University and the priciest shopping, trendiest restaurants, and most expensive art galleries. We pulled up to a redbrick colonial with a rose garden and a well-tended lawn.

“Evan was the one who made the decision to call you. Our attorney has evacuated, and we couldn’t get in touch with him,” Jackson Warner said when David and I arrived. “But we understand our son’s attachment to the child, and now, with what happened this morning, we believe it may be time to become more helpful.”

David and I shook the man’s hand, murmured something about being grateful for their cooperation, and we were motioned toward the living room, where Evan sat holding a large envelope. “Lieutenant Armstrong and Agent Garrity,” the young man greeted us, his face a blank, as if he were only half-aware of what was going on around him. “Thanks for coming. I apologize for the other day. I didn’t really understand. I thought it was just Crystal being Crystal. I never thought—”

“No problem,” David said when Evan choked up and couldn’t finish. “What’s happened? Why did you call us?”

“This,” he said, holding up the envelope. The envelope was padded, white with green markings, a common type sold in office supply stores. Nothing was written across the front.

“When did this come?” I asked.

“It was outside this morning, on the front porch, when we opened the door to get our newspaper,” said Alicia Warner, seated in a chair near a window looking out toward the front yard. Her eyes were red, as if she’d been crying. The mood in the room was somber, filled with what I suspected could be a rather bitter dose of regret. Subdued, Evan’s parents weren’t issuing orders, as they had been at the sheriff’s department two nights earlier, just hours after Joey disappeared.

As I watched, David claimed a latex glove out of his back pocket and slipped it on. He then splayed open the envelope far enough to reach inside and pull out something that looked like a ball of fabric. As it fell open, I saw that what he held was a small pair of boy’s jockey shorts.

“I recognize them. They’re Joey’s,” Evan said, his hands tucked under his arms, holding back anger and fear. “Look at the front. It looks like there’s blood on them.”

With two fingers, David held up the garment and examined it. The little boy’s underpants were dirty, stained with urine and, on the front, over Spider-Man’s face, a smear of what appeared to be dark, dried blood.

“I’ll get evidence bags,” I said, and I turned and rushed out. I didn’t want anyone, especially Evan and his parents, to see how upset I was. On the street, I hit the unlock on my key twice and opened the Tahoe’s rear door, pulled out a box that had evidence bags tucked inside, grabbed a few, then took a moment to wipe my eyes before I walked back toward the house, thinking about the contents of the envelope.

Inside, Alicia Warner cried openly while her husband attempted to comfort her. Evan sat alone, barely holding on to his self-control. His left fist opened and closed, pumping with anger. On the edge of the chair, he appeared poised to jump up, to do something, anything, but apparently he didn’t know where to go or what to do. “I keep thinking about how small Joey is,” Evan said, his words stumbling over one another, tears running down his cheeks. “He’s always been a little runt of a kid, you know. A funny little guy. Always following me around. Poppa this. Poppa that. He’s so small, his hands barely fill my palms.”

Holding up his right hand as if he wanted us to see, he lowered his head and wept. His parents scurried closer to comfort him, and his mother handed her son a tissue she’d already dampened with her own tears.

“What changed besides this envelope?” I asked Evan’s parents. “Why are you cooperating now?”

Jackson looked at me and shook his head, as if unable to speak.

“When you showed us Joey’s photo, we recognized him,” Alicia said, holding her son’s shoulders as he cried. “We now believe he is our grandson. He looks just like Evan did at his age.”

In that instant, perhaps it wasn’t fair to deliver a blow while they were already reeling. But I didn’t think about that. I had to know. “So, if that little boy wasn’t related to you, you wouldn’t lift a finger to help him? Even to save his life?”

“Sarah,” David chastised, his voice barely above a whisper, although I knew he had to be thinking the same thing. “Not now.”

“There’s something else in there,” Evan said, bringing our attention back to the envelope. “A note, I think. Once I saw Joey’s jockey shorts, I didn’t want to touch anything else, so I didn’t open it, but there’s a piece of paper.”

First things first. I opened an evidence bag, and David dropped the Spider-Man underwear inside. He then reached back inside the white envelope and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. Using his gloved hand, he flipped it open. The paper was unlined, from appearances standard printer paper. He slipped it in an evidence bag, and my heart quickened when I saw what was on it: a symbol drawn with a thick black marker, an eight-point star with an empty circle in the center.

Images of the lifeless cattle, their heads reduced to gaping, angry wounds, filled my mind, and the first thing I thought of was what Alex Benoit had said to me only hours earlier: It seems to me that this man has something planned. Something more serious than dead bulls.

“What does that mean? Is it some kind of code? Is he asking for money? What does he want?” Alicia Warner asked, frantic. “Anything. We’ll give him anything he asks for, if we can get the boy back.”

Sometimes knowledge hits with all the force of a physical blow. Oh, my God, no, I thought. What I said was directed at Evan’s father, Jackson Warner. “May I use a computer, one hooked up to the Web?”

“Sure,” he said, searching my face for answers. “There’s a laptop in the study.”

While I walked to the study with David, I thought over what had just happened. The blood on the underwear was the kidnapper’s way of upping the stakes, flaunting that he had the boy and that Joey was in grave danger. The symbol? That I needed more answers to decode.

Minutes later, I was searching Google. Since Benoit had explained the origins of the three symbols left on the longhorns, I keyed in Adinkra and then “star.” A list of links filled the screen. The one I clicked on read, “Adinkra Symbolism,” and the page that came up was from a university Web site, and it bore depictions of the symbols in the left column along with explanations on the right. I didn’t find Abakuá, the war and blood sign, but I didn’t expect to. Benoit had said that particular sign was Afro-Cuban, not Adinkra. I did, however, quickly focus in on both Ako-ben, the call to arms, and Aya, the fern that depicts defiance, meaning “I am not afraid of you.”

Near the bottom, I discovered the third symbol I was looking for, an eight-pointed star with an open circle in the center, similar to the star on the piece of paper in the envelope. This particular symbol’s name was listed as Nosoroma, and its meaning was “a child of the Supreme Being.”

I looked at David. “We need to find Buckshot,” I said. “Now.”