“—SEE YOU! Step back from the girl.”
The words echo between the hard walls. Chalk looks frantically from side to side. “WHAT IS GOING ON?” Chalk yells, frantically searching for the voice. “WHO ARE YOU?”
“CHALK,” the voice repeats, stentorian. “Your house is surrounded. If you touch the girl, you will be dead within seconds. DO YOU WANT TO DIE?”
As if stuck in a nightmare, Chalk looks behind him, expecting to see laughing teenaged girls pour from the closet, but sees only a pink concrete wall.
“Leala!” the voice commands. “Hand Mr Chalk the telephone. Are you able to do that?”
“Si. Yes.”
Leala reaches into her panties and removes the phone. She holds it out in a trembling palm.
“Take the phone, Mr Chalk,” the voice says. It’s angry.
Chalk stares, his mouth drooping open. Leala sees a man with the face of a confused child. The terrible thing on his belt waggles back and forth.
“Take the FUCKING PHONE, CHALK!”
Minnie Chalk’s hand is shaking. He takes the phone and brings it to his red mouth. “Yes?” It’s a whisper.
“Go outside and stand in the street. That’s an order. If you take one step toward the girl, you will die.”
Chalk carefully puts down the phone, takes a step backwards and walks away like a boy scolded by his mommy. He ascends the stairs without a backward glance.
Tears trickle down Leala’s cheeks, then become a flood.
When a weeping Leala told us her captor had gone, I jammed the Rover in gear and sped toward the scene. Minutes later we arrived at a huge Victorian mansion surrounded by towering palms, the yard flowing with bougainvillea. Six units and two ambulances claimed the street. I saw a prisoner in the rear of a cruiser, head bowed.
“That him?” I asked the nearest uniform. “Chalk?”
A nod. “The guy was just standing at the curb in a bathrobe with his mouth open. I don’t know what he’s seeing, but it’s not us. I think his wires are fried.”
“The girl?”
“Being attended by the medics. Physically, I think she’s fine. You know her?”
“We met once,” I said. Gershwin and I started to the ambulance. “Uh, Detectives?” the cop asked.
We turned. The guy held up an evidence bag. “We found this in the bushes.”
Gershwin and I looked at the object for a two-count, all it took. We resumed our walk to the ambulance. Leala was inside, a medic holding ice to a swelling eye and cheek. She looked up and saw us.
She leapt from the ambulance and we held one another, Leala, me and Gershwin. No one spoke a word, since we’d been talking all night.