RCC02 - Heroes Often Fail

by Frank Zafiro

“I’m not sure. He said he had to drive to Atlanta, then fly to New York. Then Minneapolis to Seattle to River City. There are a couple of layovers.” She shrugged. “Sometime tomorrow, I guess.”

  Crawford looked over at Gio, then back at Kathy again. “Are you comfortable with Officer Giovanni here?” he asked.

  She looked up at him, then over at Gio. “Yes,” she nodded.

  Crawford grunted. “And the chaplain?”

  “Of course. Why do you ask?” Kathy asked him.

  “Because, Mrs. Dugger, I’d like to leave an officer here full time until this is resolved.”

  “What for?”

  “In case there’s a ransom call.”

  Kathy’s lip quivered and she lowered her forehead to her palm and cried softly. The chaplain put his hand on her shoulder.

  “Is that all right?” Crawford asked.

  She nodded silently.

  Crawford grunted again, then caught Gio’s eye. He waved for the officer to follow him, then turned and strode out of house.

  Gio reached out and patted Kathy’s shoulder. “I’ll be right back, ma’am.”

  Standing in the middle of the front lawn, Crawford had re-lit his cigar. The acrid smell stuck in Gio’s nostrils.

  “You want some overtime?” Crawford asked in between puffs.

  “Doing what?”

  Crawford picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue and flicked it onto the grass. “I don’t want a parade of cops traipsing through these poor people’s house. But someone needs to stay here in case we get contact from the kidnappers.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  Crawford gave him a suspicious look. “It’s just that I don’t want to roll in a swing shifter and then a graveyard officer. I’d like to keep it at a day shift and graveyard officer. It’s worth a little overtime to give these folks some peace.”

  “I said I’ll do it.”

  Crawford grunted and puffed on his cigar.

  “Are you going to bring in phone recorders?” Gio asked.

  “No.” Crawford exhaled a cloud of pungent, blue smoke. “Phone traps are already set up with the phone company. Every call will be taped down at the station.”

  “All right.” Gio hadn’t known they could do that. “Any special directions?”

  “Yeah,” Crawford said. “Try not to bang the little girl’s mother after the chaplain leaves, Giovanni.”

  Crawford turned and walked to his car.

  1118 hours

  Kendra’s voice was very quiet.

  “He had scary eyes. That’s why I ran.”

  Detective John Tower nodded his head for Kendra to continue.

  “I ran as fast as I could, but I don’t think he chased me. That’s how I got away.”

  “You must be a good runner.”

  Kendra shrugged, then asked, “If you’re a cop, where’s your gun?”

  “I keep it out of sight,” Tower said.

  “Why?”

  “Because some kids are afraid of guns.”

  “I’m not,” Kendra said. “Do you have a gun like Officer Will?”

  “Pretty much the same one, yeah,” Tower said. “But I carry mine here.” He pantomimed where his pistol hung from his shoulder rig.

  “Why?”

  “It’s more comfortable,” Tower answered. He changed the subject. “Do you like to draw?”

  “Sure.”

  “Would you like to draw a picture of the bad man for me?”

  Kendra recoiled and shook her head rapidly. Tower held out his palms, placating her. “It’s okay, then. You don’t have to.”

  Kendra shook her head again fiercely.

  “All right,” Tower said. “We’ll just talk about it and I’ll write it down. Would that be better?”

  Slowly, Kendra nodded her head.

  Tower opened his narrow steno pad. “I wish I could draw,” he pretended to mutter to himself.

  “Why?” the little girl asked.

  Tower looked up, feigning surprise. “Oh. Well, if I was good at drawing, you could just tell me and I could draw it for you.”

  “Like on TV.”

  “You saw that on TV?”

  “Yeah. I watched Unsolved Mysteries with the babysitter and the guy drew a picture from what the person said.”

  “You want to try it?” Tower asked. “I’ll try if you will.”

  “Okay.”

  “Tell me about the driver first. Did you see him?”

  “Not really. He was big and looked like Bill Cosby.”

  “How about the scary guy, then. How tall was he?”

  She shrugged. “I’m little. Everyone else is big.”

  Tower’s smile widened. “Fair enough. Do you remember what he was wearing?”

  “Jeans. I think.”

  “Blue?”

  “I think.”

  Tower sketched the beginnings of a stick figure on the top of the notebook page and jotted the description lower on the page. “How about a shirt?”

  “A T-shirt.”

  “What color?”

  “Yellow?”

  “Is that what you remember?”

  “Yeah.”

  Tower traced the stick man for a moment. Then, “What did his face look like?”

  “I only saw his eyes. They were scary.”

  “Is that because you only looked at his eyes?”

  “No. He had a mask. A black one.”

  “Do you remember what kind of mask?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Could you see any part of his face except for his eyes, Kendra?”

  She shook her head.

  “How about his skin? Was it white?”

  She shook her head again. “It was brownish.”

  “Dark brown or light brown?”

  “Dark.”

  “Did you see anything else?”

  She shook her head.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “Did you see a tattoo?”

  “Oh, yeah. I did.”

  “Can you describe it?”

  Kendra swallowed and closed her eyes. “It was on his arm.”

  “Which arm?”

  She opened her eyes and pointed to his right arm. Tower sketched on his stick man for a moment, then asked. “What did it look like?”

  “It was…a spider web,” she whispered and touched the point of her elbow. “Here.”

  Tower nodded and jotted down the description. Then he looked back up at the little girl. “Now, Kendra, did this man say anything? Did he talk?”

  She thought for a moment, then nodded her head vigorously. “When I ran, he said, ‘Hey, you kid, get back here!’”

  “What did his voice sound like?”

  “Scary.”

  “Was it high like this—“ he made a squeaky voice, then shifted to baritone—“or low this this?”

  Kendra giggled at him. “You’re funny.”

  “I try. Do you remember the voice?”

  “Yeah. It was kinda low.”

  “Do you know what an accent is, Kendra?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s where people talk kind of funny, you know? Like this.” He affected a British accent. “Cheer-i-o, madam.”

  Kendra stared at him. “Like in Mary Poppins?”

  “You’ve seen that?”

  “It’s my mommy’s favorite. She has the tape.”

  “Well, then, yeah, like that guy in Mary Poppins.”

  “He didn’t sound like that.”

  “Did he talk funny in a different way?”

  She thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah.”

  “How did he talk?”

  “Like that little mouse in the cartoon.”

  “Which cartoon?”

  “The one with the big white hat and he goes really fast?”

  Tower remembered the cartoon. “Speedy Gonzalez? Andele, andele, arriba! That guy?”

  She nodded emphatically.

/>   “Did he say anything else?”

  She thought some more, then nodded. “When I was running away, I heard him yell, ‘Let’s go, Wesley’ to the other guy.”

  “The driver?”

  “Yeah.”

  Tower traced his stick man some more and jotted a few notes. “Kendra, did Amy say anything?”

  “No.”

  “Did she scream?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Did she know the people in the van?”

  “No,” Kendra said. “She was just too scared, like me. And then he grabbed her. He grabbed her first.”

  Tower looked the little girl in the eye and saw the knowledge there that he’d hoped she’d be spared. But it was there. She knew that if the man had chosen to grab her first, he’d be talking to Amy Dugger right now, and she’d be in a very bad place instead of Amy.

  “You wanna see my picture?” he asked her with a forced grin.

  SIX

  1131 hours

  In another world, the attic might be a wonderful place to be.

  She could smell the dust and saw it floating in the air, highlighted in a shaft of sunlight that came through a high window.

  There were boxes and boxes of things, but she didn’t dare look in them. Even though the scary man had patted her on the head and then on the bottom and told her she was home now, she knew this wasn’t home. It was like the opposite of Fairy Castle, where everything was dangerous instead of wonderful.

  She sat in the chair he had pulled out to the center of the room for her. It had a cushion on it and she found it to be comfortable enough. Several feet away was the small desk and mirror set that the chair belonged to, and Amy imagined that was the type of thing that a real princess would have in her room.

  If princesses were real.

  She couldn’t stop shivering, even though the room wasn’t cold. A little stuffy, but not cold.

  The house creaked and she jumped, but there was no further sound. It almost seemed that the house was laughing gently at her.

  Mommy! She wanted to scream. I want my Mommy!

  But he’d told her that if she wasn’t a good girl, he would take his van and go get her mommy. And he wouldn’t bring her here. He would hurt her bad.

  Amy believed him.

  She’d seen his eyes. Those terrible eyes that said something to her that she didn’t understand, but that scared her deep in her stomach.

  I have to be a good girl. I have to keep my Mommy safe!

  The house creaked again. She jumped again, then swore she heard the whisper of laughter coming from the walls.

  She had to stop imagining things. Houses don’t laugh.

  There was another creak, almost in protest to her thought, but this one didn’t fade. Instead, she heard tromping on the narrow stairs to the door. There was a metallic click and jiggle at the knob and the door swung open.

  In the shadows, for a moment, Amy thought she was looking at a troll from one of her bedtime stories. Amy swallowed a squeak. The figure moved forward and the shaft of sunlight fell across it.

  It’s a troll, a scary, mean troll—

  And then she saw that it was just a woman.

  Maybe. It could be a troll.

  She was old, Amy could tell. Older even than her Mom. And she was a little fat, too. The skin on her face sagged and Amy saw some bumps on her cheek. Wild, black hair was cut short and spiky atop her head. Amy couldn’t shake the image of her as a troll.

  “Are you comfortable, dear?” the woman asked, and her voice scared Amy even more than the eyes of the man had. It reminded her of the witch in Sleeping Beauty or the step-mother in Cinderella and the sound of it sent stabs of fear into her belly.

  She didn’t answer right away and the woman stepped toward her. “It isn’t polite not to answer.”

  “I’m…okay,” Amy whispered.

  “Just okay?” The woman came closer. Amy could smell her perfume and another smell, too. It was the smell her father occasionally had when he watched football. “I would think you would be wonderful, since you are starting your new life.”

  Amy swallowed and tried not to cry. She struggled to remember what her parents had taught her about being polite.

  “Please, ma’am. I want to go home.”

  Stubby fingers extended toward her and touched her cheek. Plastic bracelets dangled from the wrist. “You are home, dear.”

  A sudden sob burst out of her chest. “I want my mommy, please!”

  The woman retracted her hand and balled it into a fist. “That stupid girl!” she shrieked. “She doesn’t deserve a child like you! She’s a fucking idiot!”

  Amy blanched at the yelling and the bad words.

  The woman took a deep, shuddering breath and ran her fingers through her hair, making the bracelets jangle. The sound was loud in the quiet of the attic.

  “Please?” Amy asked again.

  “Shut up!”

  Amy couldn’t stand it any longer. The single sob that had burst out became the catalyst for all the rest. They tore at her chest and she let loose an uncontrollable wash of tears.

  “I said, shut up!” the woman screamed and raised her fist to strike her.

  Amy recoiled, covering her head with both arms.

  But the blow never came.

  After a few moments, she sensed the woman kneel next to her. The smell of her perfume and beer was overwhelming, despite Amy’s running nose. She felt a pair of arms envelope her. Flabby, clammy skin pressed against her face.

  “It’s okay, dear. Don’t cry,” she said in soothing tones, but Amy found no comfort in her words. The touch of the woman’s arms made the little girl’s skin crawl.

  “Puh-puh-please?” she said between hitching sobs.

  “Don’t cry,” the woman repeated. “It’s all right now. You’re with your Grammy. Your mommy didn’t want you anymore, so I came to get you. That’s all.”

  Amy shook her head in disbelief. Her mommy didn’t want her? That couldn’t be true.

  “Yes, it’s true,” Grammy said, as if she’s heard Amy’s thoughts. “Sometimes mommies change their minds about keeping their kids. That’s what your mommy did. That’s why I came to get you and I brought you here.”

  Amy’s sobs racked her chest. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t.

  “I’ll take care of you now,” Grammy said. “I’ll love you. Me and your Grandpa Fred.”

  Amy couldn’t stop crying and she couldn’t stop shaking her head no.

  “But you’ll have to be a very good girl,” Grammy said, stroking Amy’s hair. “You’ll have to be very, very good.”

  Seven

  1134 hours

  “What do you have?” Browning asked the officer.

  Officer Aaron Norris glanced over at his partner, Virgil Gilliam, with a touch of pride.

  “I think I’ve got your van,” the veteran told Browning.

  Browning turned his gaze to the blue van at the side of the road ten yards away. A black man sat stewing in the driver’s seat. Browning turned back to Norris. “What happened?”

  “I spotted him driving—“

  Gilliam cleared his throat.

  Norris shot him a dirty look, then shrugged, “All right, we both spotted him driving slowly around Medgar Evers Elementary school. The van matched, the driver matched, so we stopped him.”

  “You talk to him yet?”

  “Got his license.”

  Browning held out his hand and Norris gave him the driver’s license. “What’d he say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  Norris shrugged. “He gave me the typical line of crap that I was only stopping him because he’s black.”

  “Which in this case is true,” Gilliam said.

  “No,” Norris said, “I stopped him because he’s driving a blue van and because he’s black.”

  “You didn’t ask him any questions?” Browning asked, ignoring their banter. Sometimes he wished for rookies instead of veterans. T
hey made some mistakes, but they tried like hell to do the job right and were far less concerned with being impressed by themselves.

  Norris fixed him with a defensive gaze, as if he’d heard Browning’s thoughts. “Last time I did an interview and a Major Crimes detective came along, he beefed me for supposedly screwing up his investigation.” Norris made air quotes as he finished the sentence. “So no, detective, I did not interview the suspect. He’s virgin territory. Have at it.”

  Browning resisted the urge to rip into Norris, knowing it would do no good. He’d never admit he’d been wrong once in his life, anyway. Instead, he looked down at the driver’s license.

  Albert Jefferson was the driver’s name. His license read that he was 6’2” and 220 pounds. That certainly fit the preliminary description he had.

  He handed the license back to Norris. “Run him up on the data channel. Let me know his driving status, arrest record, anything of interest.”

  Norris accepted the license, seemingly willing to let their truce stand.

  Browning turned and walked to the van.

  The driver sat impatiently in his seat, watching Browning approach in his side mirror. He looked a little heavier than 220 and had a touch of premature gray at his temples.

  “Mr. Jefferson?” Browning asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I appreciate you being patient today—“

  “Patient, my ass. Who are you?”

  “Detective Browning.”

  “Are you these guys’s boss?”

  Browning shook his head. “Not really.”

  “No? ‘Cause those are some racist sonsabitches back there.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Jefferson snorted. “They only stopped me because I’m black and I when I told them that, the one guy there smirked at me.”

  “Actually, Mr. Jefferson, in a way, you’re right.”

  “I know I’m right.” Then his eyes narrowed and he gave Browning a suspicious look. “Wait a minute. What do you mean, I’m right? You’re agreeing with me?”

  Browning nodded. “Here’s the situation. Earlier today, a little girl was kidnapped. Whoever took her was driving a blue van and the driver was a large black male. You match the description. That’s why the officers stopped you.”

  Jefferson listened carefully. “You think I took someone’s baby girl?”

  “Not necessarily.”