Midnight Rambler

by James Swain

  “Sit down,” I said.

  “Do you believe me?”

  I pointed at his chair.

  “Do you?”

  “Sit,” I ordered him.

  Finally he sat.

  “No, I don't believe you,” I said flatly.

  “But I'm telling the truth,” he wailed.

  “Something's bothering you, son, and I want to know what it is.”

  Tram held his head with both his hands and looked down like there wasn't enough floor to stare at.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “This was my last chance, and I blew it,” Tram said.

  “What's that supposed to mean?”

  “I've been straight for six months. No weed, no beer, going to church every Sunday, working eight-to-six in my daddy's restaurant. Peggy Sue told me if I didn't clean up my act, she'd divorce me and get sole custody of my daughter. And I've been doing good, until today.”

  “Do you blame yourself for what happened?”

  He nodded, still looking down. “I was watching her.”

  “Tell me what happened.

  From the beginning.”

  “We came out of the ‘It's a Small World’ exhibit. Peggy Sue got on line to buy snacks, and me and Shannon went looking for hidden Mickeys.”

  “Hidden what?”

  “Hidden Mickeys.”

  “Is that a game?”

  “There's hundreds of hidden images of Mickey Mouse in the park,” he explained. “They're in tables and on buildings and sometimes you see them in shadows at certain times of the day. We're staying at a Disney hotel, and they've got a promotion if you find a certain number of them. Shannon was looking at a hidden Mickey carved in a shrub, and I went to help Peggy Sue with the snacks. When I came back, my baby was gone.”

  “How long did you leave your daughter?”

  “Half a minute.”

  “Do you consider Shannon's disappearance your fault?”

  Tram choked up. “Yeah.”

  “So you screwed up.”

  “I've been doing that my whole life.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “Yeah, I screwed up.”

  “But you didn't sell her to someone.”

  Tram shook his head, and tears flowed down his cheeks. I didn't know whether to believe him or not. But I wanted to believe him, and sometimes that's the best emotion to run with. I placed my hand firmly on his shoulder, and he looked up at me hopefully.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Tram and Peggy Sue were reunited, and Sally drove them to the front entrance of the Magic Kingdom in a golf cart. I followed in a separate cart, watching Tram from a distance. The kid was still bothering me, and I wondered if he was high on something when his daughter disappeared. That would explain his hyped-up behavior.

  We reached the entrance, parked, and got out. There were ten turnstiles. A pair of Disney security guards stood at each turnstile, holding a picture of Shannon Dockery while watching people pass through. Characters in Mickey Mouse costumes also stood by the turnstiles. Sally must have heard about Shannon's fascination with hidden Mickeys and decided this would be a good way to draw the child out.

  I stood with Tram and his wife and Sally on a patch of grass beside the entrance. Sally asked Peggy Sue what kind of shoes her daughter was wearing. She explained that while the abductors had probably changed Shannon's clothes, they wouldn't know what size shoes she wore and would have to leave those on her feet.

  “Pink Reeboks,” Peggy Sue said.

  “You sure she wasn't wearing her flip-flops?” Tram asked.

  “She wanted to wear her flip-flops, but I wouldn't let her,” Peggy Sue said. “My daughter's wearing pink Reeboks.”

  Sally went to each pair of guards and instructed them to be on the lookout for a child wearing pink Reeboks. Ten minutes passed, and hundreds of families walked by. Everything was being done by the book, but there was a problem. Too many small children were walking past to let the guards get a good look at each one. I pulled Sally aside.

  “This is only going to get worse as the park starts to clear out,” I said.

  “What should I do?” Sally asked.

  “Slow the lines down.”

  “I can't do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Half the people inside the Magic Kingdom are infants,” Sally explained. “These kids have to eat, go to the bathroom, take a nap. If the lines start backing up, they'll start screaming, and we'll have a full-blown catastrophe on our hands.”

  Sally was starting to sound desperate. She'd done everything she could, yet knew it wasn't good enough. I stared at the families pouring through the turnstiles. Fort Lauderdale also had theme parks, and I had lost a four-year-old girl on my watch two years earlier that I would forever lose sleep over. Her disappearance was a total mystery until a maintenance man told his bosses about some odd things he'd discovered in the trash.

  “Can you get me into the park?” I asked.

  “Sure. What do you have in mind?”

  “I want to search the area where Shannon was abducted.”

  “I'll get one of the guards to drive you,” Sally said.

  I pointed at Tram standing nearby, holding his wife's hand.

  “I want him to come with me,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  A Disney security guard drove us inside the Magic Kingdom in a golf cart. I sat behind Tram and watched him jerk his head at every infant we passed. He was crazy with worry and called out his daughter's name several times.

  The guard parked near the “It's a Small World” exhibit, and we hopped out. This had been my daughter's favorite ride when she was little. If prompted, Jessie would sing the entire song from memory, although it had been years since I'd asked. I hummed the chorus and saw Tram stiffen.

  “You trying to be funny?” he asked.

  “No, just trying to stay calm. Mind my asking you a question?”

  Tram didn't answer me.

  “What are you on?” I asked.

  Tram swallowed his Adam's apple.

  “I ain't on nothing.”

  “Stick to telling the truth. You're better at it.”

  “I am telling the truth,” he said defensively.

  I was close enough to him to smell his breath. It was mint flavored with a hint of something acidic: The smell was one I'd encountered countless times before. He'd been drinking, and I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.

  “Stop lying to me, you stupid little son of a bitch,” I said. “You've been hitting the sauce, haven't you?”

  His defiant attitude melted away. “I had a couple of beers for breakfast, that's all.”

  “Then what was the bullshit line about you quitting?”

  “I slipped.”

  “How many is a couple?”

  “A six-pack.”

  “Does your wife know that?”

  Tram shook his head.

  “So you were drunk when your daughter got snatched.”

  Tram's face twisted with agony. With many missing children cases, there was often another crime behind the abduction. Sometimes the crime was excusable, like a parent bowing to a child's demand to go inside a store alone. Other times, the crime was so damning that it could never be excused. In this case, Tram Dockery was not a fit parent, and didn't deserve the second chance the world had given him.

  “God damn you, son,” I said.

  I made Tram take me to the last place he'd seen Shannon. The guard tagged along and stood dutifully to one side. He was an older black man with wispy hair and watery eyes. His expression said he'd seen many like Tram before.

  “Shannon was right here the last time I saw her,” Tram said.

  We were standing by an enormous bush carved to look like Mickey Mouse. Tram pointed at a concession stand thirty feet away.

  “Peggy Sue was over there carrying two cardboard trays, and I went to help her,” he said. “When I came back, my baby was gone.”

  I d
id a three-sixty revolution and looked for places where a person could have taken Shannon without being spotted. I was suspicious about the fact that Shannon wasn't heard during her abduction, until the doors to the “It's a Small World” exhibit opened. Then, five hundred noisy kids and their parents poured out, and I realized that Shannon could have been screaming her head off and not been heard.

  “What's your name?” I asked the guard.

  “Vernon,” the guard replied. “People call me Vern.”

  “Vern, where's the closest restroom?”

  “There are several,” he said.

  “Do they all have family restrooms?”

  “No, only the restroom around the corner has that.”

  “Show me,” I said.

  Vern led us to a small redbrick building right off the main drag. It had three doors—His, Hers, and Family—and was a perfect place to bring a child to. I banged on the door for Family. Getting no answer, I went inside.

  Like everything at Disney, the bathroom's interior was spotlessly clean. In the corner sat a metal trash can, and I dragged it outside onto the grass. Pulling off the top, I rummaged through the smelly diapers and other garbage stuffed inside.

  “What you doing?” Tram asked.

  “Looking for your daughter's clothes.”

  “You think they changed her, huh?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Tram started to help. His face was milk white, and he was sucking down air. If I hadn't known better, I would have thought he was having an epiphany and going through a life-altering experience. But more than likely, it was all the beer he'd drunk burning through his system. I held up a child's ripped T-shirt.

  “This look familiar?”

  Tram squinted at the piece of clothing and shook his head.

  “No, that ain't hers.”

  We kept searching. Vern was a step ahead of us and pulled trash containers out of the two other lavatories, dumping their contents onto the grass as well. By the time we were done, garbage was strewn everywhere. Vern made a call on his walkie-talkie and told someone to send people to clean up our mess.

  “There's another place we should check,” Vern said.

  “Lead the way,” I told him.

  We followed Vern a hundred feet down a path. He stopped at a trash container designed to look like a Chinese pagoda. Yanking open a metal door, Vern removed an enormous garbage bag and dumped the contents onto the walkway. We started to sift through the pile.

  Mostly it contained wrappers with half-eaten food or juice containers. Near the bottom, Tram found a plastic bag with its mouth tied in rabbit ears. Tearing the bag open, he let out a shout. Stuffed inside were a child's pink shorts and matching pink shirt.

  “Those are my baby's clothes,” he said tearfully.

  “You're sure?” I asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  I examined the clothes and found several long red hairs stuck in the fabric of the shirt. Shannon's abductor had given her a haircut.

  “Let me see the bag,” I said.

  Tram handed me the bag. I turned it upside down, and a metal can fell out. It made a funny sound as it rolled down the pavement.

  Tram ran after the can and snatched it off the ground. He tossed it to me, and I grabbed it out of the air and stared at the label. Blue spray paint.

  “They must have changed her hair color,” Tram said.

  I continued to stare at the label. Blue hair would have made Shannon stand out like a sore thumb. There was another reason for the spray paint, something as devious as the people behind the abduction, only I didn't have a clue what it was.

  I found myself thinking of the little girl who'd disappeared at the theme park in Fort Lauderdale. Her abductors had changed her appearance so that even her parents, who'd been standing by the turnstiles as the crowds left, couldn't identify her. Her clothes and a can of blue spray paint were later found in the trash, yet I was never able to make a connection between them.

  I have a maxim that has served me well. I always assume that the criminals I'm chasing are as smart as I am, or smarter. It may not always be true, but it keeps me on my toes. Driving toward the Magic Kingdom's main entrance in the golf cart, I suddenly realized what the can of blue spray paint was for.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I jumped out of the cart as it reached the turnstiles. Catching Sally's eye, I held the can of blue spray paint triumphantly over my head. She hurried over to me.

  “Please tell me you have some good news,” she said.

  “Shannon's abductors have cut her hair, changed her clothes, and also changed the color of her shoes,” I said. “My guess is, they made her look like a little boy.”

  Sally took the can of paint out of my hand.

  “Is this the new color of her shoes?”

  “Yes. Get me some paper.”

  Sally went to her golf cart and removed all the paper from a clipboard on the dash. She handed the paper to me, and I sprayed all the sheets with blue paint and waved them in the air to dry. Then Sally and I approached each pair of guards watching a turnstile and handed them one of the sheets.

  “Look at the shoes of each child leaving the park,” I instructed them. “If you see this color, grab the kid and yell for us.”

  Sally repeated the instructions, making sure the guards understood. Then we went to where Tram and Peggy Sue stood on the side in the grass. Tram had brought Shannon's clothes out of the park, and Peggy Sue was clutching them against her chest. I gently touched her arm.

  “Peggy Sue,” I said.

  “What do you want?” she whispered.

  “You need to pull yourself together. If there's any person your daughter will run to, it's going to be you.”

  Peggy Sue swiped at her eyes. “What if she's gone? What if they already took her out of the park? What then?”

  I wanted to tell Peggy Sue not to think those dark thoughts, but I bit my tongue instead. There was no greater sin in my line of work than making false promises.

  “We're going to find her,” Tram said, sounding strong.

  I stood by the turnstiles with Sally and watched families leave the park. Each child passed briefly before my eyes, then was gone forever. More than once I thought I'd spotted Shannon, only to realize I was wrong. Finally Sally spoke up.

  “Why are you so jumpy?” she asked.

  “Times like this I can't stand still,” I said.

  “Why don't you go back inside and see if you can spot her?”

  she suggested.

  It sounded like a good idea. An elderly couple wearing mouse ears walked past. They were smiling and holding hands like newlyweds. I approached the man and offered to buy the mouse ears from him. The man refused my money and handed the ears to me.

  “Have fun,” the man said.

  Sally got me back inside the park. Thousands of people were waiting to leave, and I was reminded how incredibly loud small children could be, especially when they were unhappy.

  I walked to the rear of the lines, feeling the hot macadam baking through my sandals. Reaching the lines' end, I turned around and started walking back, looking at little kids' shoes without being too obvious. Several irate fathers accused me of trying to cut in.

  “I've lost my family,” I said.

  The ruse worked, and let me keep moving forward. It was a slow process, and after ten minutes, I called Sally on my cell to see how things were going.

  “No sign of her yet,” she said.

  “Keep the faith,” I said.

  I slipped the phone into my pocket. I'd reached the middle of the lines and was standing in a sea of unhappy little kids. I reminded myself that Shannon's abductors were playing the roles of parents, and when they reached the turnstiles, they'd be giving star performances. Coming up from behind was the best way to go.

  Lowering my head, I continued my search.

  Most cops I knew believed in God. I'd always found this strange, considering the amount of human suffering and tragedy that cop
s were subjected to. Perhaps a religious belief was the best way to cope with these experiences. Or to explain when amazing things happened.

  Right now, I was a believer.

  I'd spotted Shannon Dockery. She was part of a family of five and was standing a hundred yards from the turnstiles with her thumb stuck in her mouth.

  I quickly noted her abductors. The woman pretending to be Shannon's mom was a thirtyish brunette with permed hair and fake fingernails painted in custom-car colors, and the man pretending to be her dad was a bearded truck-driver type who spit out a steady banter of corny jokes. They looked just as ordinary as anyone else.

  Then there were Shannon's fake brothers. The oldest boy was tall and string-bean thin and maybe ten years old, while the younger boy was short and round and didn't know how to tie his sneakers. Shannon stood between the boys, holding hands and doing the buddy system, the way kids in the park were supposed to.

  The deception Mom and Dad had used to disguise Shannon's identity was extraordinary. Many families that visited Disney wore color-coordinated or themed clothing. They did it for fun and because it made it easier for parents to watch the kids. Shannon's fake mom and dad were also wearing themed clothing. “Support Our Troops!” was splashed across their T-shirts along with pictures of the burning World Trade Center towers, and each of the children wore patriotic colors: the oldest in red, the middle in white, Shannon in blue. Had I not found the can of spray paint in the park, the disguises would have flown right by me.

  I called Sally on my cell phone.

  “Any luck?” she asked.

  “Got her,” I said quietly.

  Sally screamed into my ear. “You found her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, Jack, I love you!”

  “They're about to come out, second turnstile from your right. It's a family of five, with three little kids dressed in red, white, and blue. Shannon is in blue. I'm going to come out right behind them.”

  “A family? How old are the other kids?”

  “They're young.”

  “Hold me back if I hurt the parents, Jack.”

  Using children to commit crimes sickened even the most jaded law enforcement officers, and I understood Sally's feelings, for they were my own as well.