The Step Between

by Penny Mickelbury

She heard something that caused her to look up, and she did a double-take at the figure leaning against the doorjamb. Recognition dawned slowly, but finally she discerned that the grungy-looking specimen grinning laconically at her was Paolo Petrocelli. She’d always had difficulty imagining him conforming to the strict dress code of the FBI—dark suit, white shirt, conservative tie, wing tips—but neither did he project the bearded, blue-jeaned, sneakered, rough-and-ready street cop of film and television. He was partial to chinos and bucks and denim shirts and knit ties. And he wore his dark, reddish-brown hair in a neat and stylish ponytail.

  “What happened to you?” she asked with a bemused grin, taking in the ACE Hardware cap with the bill turned up, the plaid work shirt, the khaki slacks, and the steel-toed boots favored by construction workers. And these boots had seen work.

  “Scenic View, Ohio, is what happened to me,” he said with an exaggerated curtsey, and ambled into her office and over to the love seat, a bag in each hand.

  “You had to look like that to go to Ohio?”

  “To go to the part of Ohio that was the birthplace of Dicky Rae Waters and Ruthie Eva Simmons, yes, indeed, I had to look like this. If I wanted anybody to talk to me, that is.”

  “And did they talk to you?”

  He grinned, removed the cap, and released his long hair from the barrette that secured it in place on top of his head. “Yes, they did. Nice people, too,” he said as he took an elastic band from his wrist and deftly wrapped it around his hair. “That was one of the things that always pissed me off about the Feds, going into some place and demanding things of people and scaring and intimidating them. We usually got what we wanted, but we never got handshakes and smiles, you know?”

  She stood and came from behind the desk and sat in the rocking chair across the table from the love seat, facing him. “And you got smiles and handshakes in Scenic View?” she asked.

  He nodded. “I did. I also got”—he opened the larger of the two bags he’d brought in with him—“this. The 1972 Scenic View Miner.” He opened the book, turned a few pages, and passed it to her. “Right side, bottom row.”

  Carole Ann studied the almost thirty-year-old photograph of Ruthie Eva Simmons. She—and all of her classmates—looked impossibly young. And she knew that being eighteen in the early 1970s was, indeed, younger than being eighteen in the early days of the new, twenty-first century. She studied the legend beside Ruthie Eva’s name: Debate Club, French Club, Honor Society, newspaper staff, Girl Most Likely to Succeed. She looked up at Petrocelli and he nodded, knowing exactly what she was thinking. “Islington made her sound backwards and ignorant, like a country bumpkin. ‘Most likely to succeed’? And she didn’t want to live in Washington and be the wife of the richest man in town?”

  Instead of responding, he withdrew several sheets of paper from the bag and passed them across the table to her and watched her as she read the documents, turning them over, peering closely, he knew, at dates and signatures. And as she read, he opened the second bag he’d brought with him and withdrew a cup of Starbucks coffee. He removed the top, gently blew on the black liquid from which steam rose, and took a satisfying—and noisy—sip.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” she said finally. “Everything he said or implied about her was a lie.”

  He nodded. “She spent two years running up the road to Athens, home of Ohio University, to get herself licensed as a cosmetologist, then came home and opened her own beauty salon, bought herself a car, and was taking care of her parents when ol’ Dicky Rae came along and swept her off her feet. She gave him the money to buy his first piece of real estate. She’s the one who put him on the map.”

  Carole Ann leaned toward him. “And this was common knowledge around town? That Eve gave Islington his start?”

  He nodded. “I heard it more than once.”

  “What else did people say about her? Do people like her? Respect her?”

  He was nodding vigorously. “Oh, yeah. She was a fairy-tale hometown girl. Shy but popular, smart, a good daughter to her parents, a good friend. Determined to make something of herself, something better than the wife of a coal miner and the mother of too many children too soon. She didn’t go out much with guys and hadn’t had a serious love interest until Dicky Rae popped into her life. And the residents of Scenic View are not impressed with Dicky Rae—and they still call him that, just like they call her Ruthie Eva—and a good number of them believe that he’s done something bad to her. Otherwise, they say she’d have come back, at least to visit.”

  “And she hasn’t been back? Ever?”

  “Nope. Never. And they think he’s done something to her to prevent her return.”

  Carole Ann thumbed through the papers again. “They got married in 1975. She was twenty-one and he was thirty-one. And it looks like they left Scenic View in . . . what? Seventy-seven?”

  “Yep. Dicky Rae had bought and sold land in Ohio and in West Virginia and had made a pretty decent profit and could talk about nothing but moving to Washington, D.C. Everybody I talked to remembered that: Dicky Rae talking about what Richard Islington was going to do when he got to Washington, D.C.”

  “Certainly appears that he was a man of his word,” Carole Ann said, dropping the papers on the table. “And less than two years into D.C., Annabelle is born and Eve is gone.” She rubbed her hands together as if for warmth and looked across the table at Petrocelli. “How much help do you need, Paolo?” and she dreaded his answer because given the number of people out sick and the number of people already assigned to cases, there wasn’t a single extra body available to give him. It would mean shifting one of the investigators to the Islington case from something else.

  He was grinning slyly. “Right now, I need only you, C.A., and I need only for you to take Ruthie Eva’s Social Security number off that piece of paper there and walk it underground to Patty Bake. We all know what Patty can do with a Social Security number.” He was laughing out loud by now, and she joined him. The news of Patty’s discovery of the bogus OnShore number had spread quickly through GGI, further enhancing the walk-on-water reputation of Patty and the subterraneans, as they now were called, as if they were a 1960s Motown group.

  Carole Ann wrote down Eve Islington’s Social Security number and they took a few moments to discuss the virtual obsolescence of the flat-footed, gumshoe investigator in the modern world, and the importance of computers and those who know how to manage them. Paolo took his papers and his coffee and departed. C.A. called Patty and gave her Eve’s Social Security number. Then she got busy proving to herself that she could be as valuable to GGI as any computer.

  The call came exactly thirty minutes into their regular Monday-morning staff meeting, as if the caller knew that the first fifteen minutes were spent telling jokes and tall tales while fixing their coffee and bagels. Then the five of them—Carole Ann, Jake, Patty, Donald Smith, the business manager, and Carla Thompkins, executive assistant to all four of them by title and who, in addition to overseeing the activities of all the GGI staff assistants (Patty had requested that nobody at GGI be called a secretary), actually ran the place.

  A hasty and loud knock on the conference door preceded the entry of one of the young security specialists.

  “What is it, Bob?” Carla asked him, frowning.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Thompkins, everybody, but there’s this guy on the phone demanding to speak to Mr. Graham right now. He says if you know what’s good for you, sir, you’ll take the call.”

  Without comment or hesitation, Jake pushed back his chair, stood up, and strode to the phone. He looked down at the several blinking lights on the display and then up at Bob, who was still standing in the doorway.

  “Sorry, sir. He’s on thirty-six,” Bob said, and closed the door.

  Jake picked up the handset and pressed a button. “This is Jake Graham,” he said into the mouthpiece. “Who are you and what do you want?” He’d spoken matter-of-factly and with more impatience than hostility in his voice. Therefor
e the change in him was startling and everyone at the table stood, almost in unison, and began to move toward him.

  Carole Ann reached him first and, standing very closely to him, put a hand on his arm. It felt like a rock. He gripped the telephone so tightly that the veins in the back of his hand seemed on the verge of rupturing. The muscles in his jaw clenched and beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. He squeezed his eyes shut and then reopened them. “Yeah. It’s all clear,” he said in a tight voice. “When . . .” he began, and then held the receiver away from his face, staring at it. Then he replaced it gently and again closed his eyes, this time as if in prayer.

  “What was that, Jake?” Carole Ann asked.

  “Grace has been abducted and she will be held until we turn over every piece of information and documentation we have on OnShore Manufacturing and Seaboard Shipping and Containers. We are to turn over everything. We are to retain nothing.” He was like a zombie—totally lifeless and inanimated—and his speech sounded computerized or digitized.

  Nobody moved or spoke, everybody waiting for somebody else to be able to think of something to say or do. Carole Ann acted first. She reached around Jake and picked up the phone. She punched a button. “Find Petrocelli now and tell him to call me,” and then, still holding the phone to her ear with one hand, she depressed the button with the other. “They’ll release Grace in exchange for our OnShore and Seaboard files. When?”

  He shook his head then shrugged his shoulders. “They’ll call again in an hour.”

  Everybody except Jake jumped when the phone rang in that moment, and Carole Ann lifted her finger from the button and spoke. “Paolo? Stop whatever you’re doing and go immediately to four thirty-five Oakview Road in Silver Spring. That’s in the Georgia Avenue-Colesville Road-Sixteenth Street triangle. That’s Jake Graham’s home. His wife’s been abducted. Get there, now, Paolo. We’re on our way.”

  She hung up the phone. “Come on, Jake. Patty, start collecting that stuff and stay by the phone. You, too, Carla, and put everybody who isn’t on a job on standby.”

  She turned to leave, expecting Jake to follow. Instead he stood rooted to the spot on the floor next to the phone. She looked at him and didn’t know what to say. Donald Smith came alive. He rushed out of the conference room, taking Carla with him and leaving Carole Ann and Patty to try and rouse Jake.

  “They’re not going to hurt Grace, Jake. If they were going to hurt her, they wouldn’t have called you. You know that.

  “Jake, come on. Let’s go. Please?” The pleading in Carole Ann’s voice barely concealed the tremor. She was almost shaking with fear and very near tears. She took his arm and pulled him toward the door. They met Donald with Jake’s overcoat and Carla with Carole Ann’s coat and purse.

  “Bob’s got the truck at the front door. He’ll drive you,” Carla said.

  Patty took Jake’s other arm and she and Carole Ann led him to and out the front door, C.A. aware of them breaking the GGI rule about employees using the front door; aware of a swirl of odd and unrelated thoughts: She didn’t know Bob’s last name or how long he’d worked at GGI; she hadn’t remembered that any of the GGI Ford Explorers was green—she’d thought all of them were black; she’d forgotten that it was forecast to turn sharply colder today, with temperatures falling through the morning hours until nightfall would bring single digits; she had never before seen Jake frightened. Not even when there was a bullet in his back and he was paralyzed and facing the prospect of never walking again.

  Patty opened the truck door and put Jake in the front and fastened his seat belt around him as if he were a small child, while Carole Ann climbed into the back and Bob shifted into drive and sped off even as the sound of the slamming doors still reverberated in the frigid air. No one spoke on the drive. Carole Ann stilled her thoughts by concentrating on Bob’s expert operation of the onboard computer that plotted their route across the top of D.C., from east to west, avoiding a couple of traffic jams along the way. When they screeched to a halt in front of Jake’s house, Paolo was there, standing on the front steps. He ran down the walkway to meet Carole Ann as she leapt from the truck and ran toward him.

  “Front door was open,” he said, leaning in close to her and speaking into her ear, “so I went in and took a look. Nothing out of place except a turned-over chair in the kitchen. Cup of coffee and a muffin on a plate on the table, along with the Post and The New York Times. I guess she—Mrs. Graham—was sitting there, having her breakfast and reading the papers. Car’s still in the garage. At least I suppose it’s hers . . . ninety-something Chrysler LeBaron convertible?”

  A sick feeling spread through her as full reality set in. She herself had given the car to Grace, who loved it and who never would have left home without it. “Yes, it’s hers,” she whispered, only because that’s the best her voice would do for her.

  Paolo was about to speak until he looked up and over her shoulder and at Jake. “Jesus,” he whispered, and Carole Ann turned to look. Jake had slumped and Bob was barely holding him upright. Both Carole Ann and Paolo rushed back to the truck. Jake was a small man. Paolo and Bob were not, and they had no difficulty, one on either arm, propelling Jake up the walk and into the house. Once inside, he seemed to return to himself. He ran through the house, from room to room, never speaking but looking, searching, until finally he, too, opened the laundry room door and looked into the garage.

  He stumbled back into the kitchen and sank into a chair. “She’s gone. They have her.”

  “What did they say? What do they want?” Paolo asked.

  “They apparently want us to back away from Seaboard and OnShore. Jake, what exactly did they say?”

  “I already told you what they said.”

  She inhaled deeply. “I know you did, Jake, but Paolo needs to hear it so he can make an assessment.”

  “Then you tell him, C.A.,” Jake said, sounding like a total stranger and looking like one, too. He had sagged and was deflated. He was flat.

  Carole Ann inhaled again and struggled to remember Jake’s words after the phone call: “When he hung up the phone, Jake said, ‘We are to turn over every bit of information and documentation we have on OnShore Manufacturing and Seaboard Shipping and Containers. We are to retain nothing.’ He said Grace would be returned if we met those conditions, and that the caller would call again in an hour.”

  She, Paolo, and Bob simultaneously checked their watches. Only Jake remained motionless. Bob picked up the phone on the kitchen wall and punched in some numbers.

  “We’re at Jake’s, Carla. . . . yeah, she’s definitely gone. . . . no, not yet . . . it’s been almost an hour. . . . OK, I’ll tell her.” He hung up the phone and turned to Carole Ann. “Patty’s got the file ready,” he said.

  Paolo knelt before Jake. “What was Mrs. Graham wearing when you left her this morning, Jake?”

  He raised his eyes and looked across the table at where Grace would have sat that morning, where her abandoned coffee and muffin still sat. “A navy blue sweater, the kind that buttons up the front, and gray slacks and blue suede shoes,” he said, and choked on the words. He cleared his throat and continued, “She volunteers at that big senior citizens center on Georgia Avenue a couple of times a month, and one of the old guys there used to be a blues singer. First time Grace wore those shoes there he started singing to her. ‘Don’t nobody step on my blue suede shoes.’ ” Jake laughed softly. “He told her how Elvis Presley stole that song from a Black blues man from the Mississippi Delta, a friend of his. Old guy said he’d never seen any blue suede shoes before. So, Grace wore them whenever she went there. Just for him. That’s where she was going this morning.”

  Paolo touched his shoulder. “Did she take a coat? Or a purse?”

  Jake shook his head. “Not the purse anyway. It’s in the bedroom, and I don’t think a coat’s missing. . . .” He shook his head and looked past Paolo at Carole Ann. “If I’d listened to you in the first place this wouldn’t be happening. You told me not to fool
with the OnShore people and I wouldn’t listen—”

  “Goddammit, Jake Graham, don’t you go there. Don’t you fucking go there!” she snarled at him through clenched teeth.

  “Why not?” he said almost breezily. “It is my fault. I could have backed off after Patty turned up that bogus social, but I didn’t. As usual, I just got mad and dug deeper, bound and determined to make them sorry they ever lied to me. Now I’m the one who’s sorry. Sorry son of a bitch I am for getting my wife killed. . . .”

  Carole Ann shook him hard and his head danced about, back and forth, as if there were no bones in his neck. She stood before him breathing harder than after a five-mile run. He sat at the table looking up at her without expression in his eyes. Bob wore a look of fearful confusion. Paolo tensed, awaiting an eruption or explosion from one of them—he didn’t know which—and wishing he didn’t have to witness so intimate an exchange.

  Then the phone rang.

  “It’s them,” Jake said quietly. “You answer it, C.A. I don’t . . . I can’t . . .”

  Nausea rose in her as she turned in slow motion toward the phone. Paolo brushed past her and picked it up in the middle of the second ring.

  “Hello.” He quickly reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved his notebook and pen and began writing. “We need to hear from her first. Mr. Graham needs to talk to her and be sure she’s all right.”

  Jake had come alert and was out of the chair and to the phone in one swift motion when Paolo beckoned. “Grace?” he whispered. “I’ll do whatever they say, Grace, I prom—” His face tightened, then sagged, and he returned the phone to Paolo.

  “Can someone drive her? That’s rough country at night. And it’ll be icy—” Paolo held the phone away from his face and cursed it before hanging up. Then he turned to Carole Ann. “They want you to make the exchange. You’re to deliver the documents and get Mrs. Graham back.”

  She shook her head back and forth and backed up away from him. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No. I can’t. You do it, Paolo.”