by Frank Zafiro
“The chain of command isn’t there for you to pick and choose, officer,” he lectured. “You should have called your corporal first.”
“You want me to hang up and do that?”
Hart tried to detect sarcasm in Giovanni’s voice, but found it was too difficult over the telephone. “No, it’s too late for that now. Go ahead and brief me.”
“All right. Lieutenant, I think we might have a kidnapped girl on our hands.”
“Kidnapped?”
“Sounds like it could be, yeah.”
“Are you sure she’s not just a runaway?”
“Pretty sure,” Gio said.
“What makes you so sure?”
“The witness who says a guy in a van grabbed her up.” This time the sarcasm in his voice was apparent.
“Officer, I don’t have time for word games,” Hart snapped. “Tell me what you have.”
“I’m talking with Kendra Ferguson, a six year old girl. She’s saying that when she and her friend Amy Dugger were coming home, a van pulled up next to them and a man with a ski mask got out of it. He grabbed Amy and took her.”
“But not this…Ferguson girl?”
“She ran.”
“She outran a full-grown man?”
“My guess is he gave up when she took off.”
“Your guess? Officer, this sounds like a fantastic story, doesn’t it?”
“I think she’s telling the truth.”
Hart smiled to himself. Police officers were all so sure that they were human lie detectors. “Have you contacted the other girl’s family?”
“Not yet. No one is answering the phone.”
Hart considered. On the one hand, a major event like a kidnapping was an excellent opportunity for him to showcase his skills that he’d recently learned at an Incident Command school. But invoking I.C. was a large, not to mention expensive, move. He didn’t really want to risk making it for what could be a runaway, or worse yet, a little girl playing hide and seek. He’d look foolish if he initiated a major incident and the child was found asleep under a comforter in her sibling’s bedroom or something.
No, he decided, he needed to be methodical. He would escalate the investigation slowly and by the book. That would show the Patrol Captain and the Chief of Police that he was capable of striking a balance between the perceived needs of the public and being a steward of department resources.
“Lieutenant?” Gio asked, prompting him.
Hart shook himself from his contemplation. “Officer,” he said in the careful voice he reserved for giving instructions to line officers, “this is what I want you to do.”
0916 hours
Gio hung up the phone, shaking his head. Hart was an idiot.
“What’s wrong?” Jill Ferguson asked him. She’d brewed a small pot of coffee and now sat at the kitchen table, watching him. A second cup was on the table in front of an empty kitchen chair.
Gio shook his head. “Boss problems.”
Jill nodded and studied his face.
He picked up the cup of coffee she’d made, thanked her and took a drink. His mind was whirring. Hart had ordered him to search the Ferguson house and to find Kathy Dugger, as well as searching the school and the neighborhood. He’d graciously offered to call radio and have another officer dispatched to assist him. Once they’d accomplished that, he wanted Gio to call him back. Then he’d decide if they had a kidnapping or not.
“You look troubled,” Jill said. Her coffee cup sat untouched in front of her.
Gio shrugged. “My lieutenant isn’t so sure Kendra’s account is…accurate.”
“He thinks she’s lying?”
Gio struggled with defending Hart, who he knew was wrong. But professionalism demanded it. “Not lying. Just…six, I guess.”
Jill pursed her lips. “Kendra has an active imagination,” she admitted, “but you called Kathy, right?”
Gio nodded his agreement. “No answer there yet.” He suppressed a sigh. “It’s just procedure. Another officer will help me out and we’ll just make sure Kendra isn’t mistaken.”
“What if she’s right, though?” Jill asked. “What if, while you’re wasting time checking out her story, she really was taken?”
Gio didn’t have an answer for her. His hands were tied.
“Because if that’s the case,” Jill said, “then her kidnappers are getting further and further away.”
0922 hours
Officer Jack Stone arrived at the Ferguson residence. Gio walked out to meet him and filled him in at the door of Stone’s patrol car.
“I suppose she could be making it up,” Stone said with a shrug. “She is only six. What do you think?”
“I think Hart is an idiot,” Gio said.
Stone shrugged again. That sentiment was considered a given on the day tour.
Gio shook his head in frustration. “But I’ve got to jump through his hoops.”
Stone gave a third shrug and tapped the steering wheel absently. “What do you want me to do?”
Gio sighed. “Would you cruise around the neighborhood and look for Amy? Check the school playground, places like that.”
“Got it. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to get a good statement from our only witness so that when Hart gets off his ass and decides this really is a kidnapping, we’ll have something to go on.”
“Okay,” Stone said. “Hell of a day for the Sarge to get sick, huh?”
“You got that right.”
Gio tapped the top of Stone’s patrol car and stepped back. Stone drove away. Gio watched him go, then turned and trudged back up to the Ferguson’s front door.
Jill stood in the doorway and opened the screen door for him to enter. “Was that Officer Will?”
Gio shook his head. “Nah. That was Jack Stone. He’s about as far from Officer Will as you can get.”
Jill nodded that she understood. “So now what?”
“I need to finish my interview with Kendra. Then I go over to the Dugger’s house.”
“More coffee?”
“No, thanks,” Gio said with a grin. “I’m already buzzing. That stuff was strong.”
Jill shrugged. “I figure, why make coffee if it isn’t strong?”
“Good point.”
Jill asked, “Do you think I should go over to see Kathy once she’s home? Would that help you guys any?”
Gio hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t want to get in the way,” Jill said.
“It’s not that,” Gio told her. “It’s just that I don’t know how she’ll react. You never know. She’ll be upset and she might direct some of that at you, since Kendra was with Amy.”
“Why would she do that? It’s not Kendra’s fault.”
“No, it’s not. But people under stress do strange things.”
Jill considered that. “Well,” she said, “I’ll be in the living room if you need me.”
Gio walked back to Kendra’s bedroom. The little girl sat on the edge of the bed holding a tattered stuffed tan dog with one floppy ear.
“What his name?” he asked her softly.
Kendra looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “Major,” she answered in a dull tone.
“Looks like he’s been around for a while.”
She nodded. “My daddy got him for me when I was still a baby.”
“What happened to his ear?”
“My brother tore it off. My mom couldn’t sew it back on because he lost it somewhere.” She told him this matter-of-factly with no trace of emotion.
Gio lowered himself onto his haunches. “Kendra, you know that this is not your fault, right?”
She didn’t respond, but tears welled up in her eyes again.
“You didn’t cause this, and there’s nothing you could have done to stop it.”
The tears fell from her eyes and streamed down her face.
“But there’s something you can do now,” Gio said. “You can help me to find Amy.”
“By telling me everything you remember.”
Kendra swallowed. “But I don’t want Amy or me to get in trouble.”
“Why would she get in trouble?”
The little girl shook her head.
“Kendra, Amy didn’t do anything wrong. This isn’t her fault, either.” Gio reached out and touched her foot lightly. “Amy’s not going to get into any trouble.”
Kendra looked away, still crying.
Gio waited a moment, then pressed onward. “I know this is upsetting, but I really need your help. Will you help me, Kendra?”
She gave him a hesitant nod.
“Good,” Gio said. “That’s good. Let’s start with where you were when this happened.”
0949 hours
Irina Prusakova picked up the telephone in the Police Dispatch Center. “Dispatch,” she said with the barest trace of an accent. “Irina.”
“Irina, it’s Gio. How’s it going?”
“Fine,” she said curtly. She wasn’t falling for his charm again. Getting used by him and treated like some kind of bludnica the first time was enough for her. She hated talking with Giovanni now.
“Listen, I wanted to give you the description that my witness gave me on this call. It’s probably a kidnapping, but Hart is dragging his feet on it.”
Irina called up Adam-257’s call history and prepared to type. “Go ahead.”
“Okay,” Gio said, oblivious to her hostility. “The suspect vehicle is a full-size van, box-style. Not a mini-van. Color is either dark blue or brown. Driver was a black male, age unknown. Probably fairly tall and big, since she said he took up most of the seat.”
“Got it,” Irina said, typing.
“The main suspect, the guy that grabbed the little girl, is a shorter male. He was wearing jeans and a wife-beater T-shirt. He also—“
“Wait a sec,” Irina interrupted. “What’s a wife-beater T-shirt?”
“You’ve never heard that one?”
“No. That’s why I’m asking.”
“A wife-beater T-shirt is a white undershirt cut like a tank top. I guess it got it’s name—”
“I can figure the rest out,” Irina interrupted. “Go ahead with the rest of the description.”
“Okay,” Gio said, easily. “The suspect in the wife-beater also had a black ski mask pulled over his head. Still, the little girl got a look at his arms and said they were brown, so he’s probably Mexican.”
“You mean Hispanic,” Irina corrected.
There was a pause. “Well, I suppose so.”
Typical, she thought, and typed ‘Hispanic Male’ into the computer. “Tattoos?” she asked.
“Yeah, one,” Gio answered. “He had a giant spider on the inside of his left elbow. A black widow or a tarantula. Something like that.”
Irina typed and said nothing.
“This happened about half a block from Benson Elementary, just south on Arlene Street. The victim lives on that street. The witness lives one block west on Waterbury.”
“Anything else?”
“You’ve got the time the call came in?”
She scrolled up in the text of the call. “Complainant called in at oh-nine-thirty-one.”
“Okay. From what I can tell, this happened at about eight-thirty.”
Irina entered the information. “You have something more?”
“I think that’s all. I’m going to try to locate the mother of this kid and make sure she’s missing. Once I do, can you broadcast this information city-wide, please?”
Irina knew that if Lieutenant Hart was dragging his feet, it was because he didn’t believe this to be a kidnapping. She didn’t know why that was, because it sounded like one to her. Either way, if she made the broadcast and he heard it, he’d be upset with Gio.
She smiled. That was Gio’s problem, not hers.
“I will do that,” she said.
“Thanks, Ir—“
She hung up.
0951 hours
Gio heard the click in his ear and stopped talking.
What was her problem?
He hung up Jill Ferguson’s phone and went to find her in the living room. She sat in an overstuffed chair, reading a book.
“I’m heading over to the Dugger’s house.”
She stood and walked him to the door. “Is there anything else I can do?”
Gio thought for a moment. “Yeah, maybe. Can you check your house for Amy or any sign of her? Maybe she’s hiding and we just don’t know it.”
He saw a flicker in her eyes at the prospect that her daughter might be lying, but she nodded her head. “Sure. I’ll do it right now.”
“Thanks. You’ve been really helpful, Mrs. Ferguson.”
She shrugged. “It’s the least I could do.”
“Take care of that little girl,” Gio told her. “She’s been through a lot today.”
“I know. I will.”
Gio paused, then tipped his fingers to his temple in a small salute. “I’ll see you,” he said casually and turned to walk away.
0957 hours
Gio found Kathy Dugger unloading groceries from her Jeep in front of her house. She glanced up at him with little interest until she recognized that he was walking toward her. Her brow creased with concern.
“Is everything all right, officer?”
Gio reached out for one of the bags of groceries she held in her arms. She made no move to hand them over. Gio cleared his throat and asked, “You’re Kathy Dugger?”
She nodded.
“Do you know where you daughter is, Mrs. Dugger?”
“Of course. She’s playing with Kendra Ferguson.”
Gio clenched his jaw. A blast of adrenaline surged through his chest.
Kathy Dugger eyed him closely. “Oh my God,” she said, realization setting in. “Oh my God! Is my baby all right?”
“Ma’am—”
“Just tell me what’s happened to my baby!” Kathy demanded.
Gio bit the inside of his lip. “It’s possible she’s missing.”
Kathy let out a guttural cry and brought her hands to her face. The grocery bags toppled to the floor. Gio heard the cracking sound of thick glass breaking. The sharp odor of pickles wafted up from the bags.
“Oh, no...” Kathy moaned, and took a staggering step backward.
Gio moved forward, grabbing her by the upper arms. “Easy,” he said. “Easy.”
“My little girl,” she sobbed, falling into Gio’s chest.
Gio held her close for a moment. Then he shifted her body so that he could support her with one arm. With his free hand, he reached for his radio.
“Adam-257,” he said in a thick voice. “Broadcast that information now, please.”
Kathy Dugger’s muffled sobs shook through his chest. Her hands grasped his uniform shirt and balled into tight fists.
Gio keyed his mike again. “And start the Chaplain to my location.”
1012 hours
Captain Michael Reott’s stomach rumbled, reminding him that he’d skipped breakfast. He looked at the clock and saw that it was still too early for lunch.
Oh, well. He could stand to lose a pound or three, anyway.
He reached for the small speakers behind his desk and ensured that both the north and south side radio channels were turned on. He usually kept a close ear on the goings on in patrol. He did it partially out of responsibility, since he was the Captain of Patrol, but mostly it was an indulgence for him. He actually missed working the street in a car and dealing with problems that cropped up.
Now, ironically, most of his involvement with patrol was limited to staff meetings, disciplinary issues, equipment purchasing and reports. Always reports. If the Chief didn’t need a report, then the Mayor did. If neither of them was in immediate need for some piece of information, then a city council member seemed to always be standing by, poised to fill the void and make their own request. Reott hated reports.
&nb
sp; A voice came out of his small, north side speaker.
“Dispatch to all units. Prepare to copy information on possible abduction.”
Reott realized that the transmission had come out of both speakers. It was a city-wide broadcast. He put his pen down and waited, listening intently.
“All units, continuing on possible abduction. Six-year-old female taken from the area of 4300 N. Arlene Street. Victim is last of Dugger, first of Amy. Three feet tall, forty-two pounds, with dark hair, shoulder length.”
Reott’s eyes widened. Why hadn’t he heard about this?
”Suspect vehicle is a dark blue or brown full-size van, unknown plate. Driver is large black male. Suspect is Hispanic male in a white tank-top or undershirt, jeans and a black ski mask. Suspect has a large tattoo of a spider on the inside of his left elbow. Nothing further at this time.”
Reott slammed his fist down on his desk. That goddamn Lieutenant Hart should have called him about this! The Captain picked up the phone and started to dial Hart’s office, then slammed the receiver down on the cradle.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
He picked the telephone up again and dialed directly into Dispatch.
1014 hours
Kathy Dugger was frantic.
“What I want to know,” she said to Gio in barely controlled tones, “is what you people are doing to find my daughter.”
“Everything we can, Mrs. Dugger,” Gio said. “I have Officer Stone checking the school and the neighborhood right now.”
“According to you, she’s not in the neighborhood or at the school. She’s in some man’s fucking van!”
“We’re not sure of that,” Gio told her. “When you’re dealing with young children, there’s a certain procedure we need to go through.”
“Procedure? Procedure!” Kathy Dugger’s voice was shrill. “My daughter is missing and you’re talking to me about procedure?”
Gio winced inside, but forced himself to nod. “Yes. I have to.”
“Why?”
Because my lieutenant is a complete idiot.
“The procedure is in place, Ma’am, because it has been successful in the past. Now, our intention is to find Amy and find her as quickly as possible. But I need you calm. And I need your help.”
