The Kidnappers

by Willo Davis Roberts

  “Ingrate,” Ernie muttered as we left him.

  We managed to liberate two confections apiece, and I hoped it wasn’t Mom who emptied the containers later and saw how much of the top layer was missing.

  “Better than deli stuff,” Pink said, licking his fingers after the last one. “What now?”

  “I guess we could go to a movie, after my father comes home and I get a chance to talk to him. Right now, though, I want to check with Mom one more time and see if she’s heard anything from Willie’s dad.”

  My mother was directing the placement of some small potted trees. I rolled my eyes at Pink, who reached out to feel one of the leaves. “Real,” he pronounced. “They’re so perfect I thought surely they were artificial.”

  The doorbell rang.

  Mom turned and opened the door, but it wasn’t another one of the tradespeople she was expecting.

  “Mrs. Bishop? I’m Detective O’Hara.” He flashed some kind of ID at her. “I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes.”

  “I’m very busy right now, can it wait? Oh—is it about . . .?” She swallowed at the same time I did, and stepped backward, allowing him to come in. “We can talk in the study, if you’ll come this way.”

  He stepped into the foyer, dodging a guy with an empty hand truck whom Mom stopped by putting a hand on his sleeve.

  “Please use the other elevator, back through the kitchen,” she told him.

  “Oh, sure, sorry,” the guy said, and retreated through all the confusion.

  The man who’d said he was a detective was staring at Pink and me. He was a medium-size guy, and very ordinary looking. Yet he sent prickles running along my spine.

  “Is this Joe Bishop?” he asked.

  The prickle turned icy. I licked my lips. “I’m Joe.”

  He didn’t smile. “Be a good idea if you came along, too, son.”

  “Is Mr. Bishop here?” O’Hara asked as he stood aside for the rest of us to precede him into the study, where he closed the door.

  “No, though I expect him in the next hour or so,” Mom said nervously. “Is this about . . . the Groves boy?”

  Detective O’Hara had pale blue eyes that were sharp enough to cut human flesh. As Pink said later, he almost checked to see if I was bleeding.

  “If you’d all sit down, I’d like to ask some questions,” he said, as if Mom hadn’t spoken. “Anything discussed in this room is confidential. None of you are to repeat any of it elsewhere, with anyone.”

  This time it was Pink who was impaled on that cold blue gaze. “Are you one of the Bishop children, too?”

  “Um, no, I’m Pink Murphy. Charles Murphy, actually. My dad’s a vice president of the telephone company, Charlie Murphy. I know about Willie.”

  O’Hara might have been formed of steel.

  “Who is it you’re speaking of?”

  “Willie Groves.” Pink blushed. “The second,” he offered unexpectedly. And then, when we all looked at him as he sank onto a couch, he added, “Willie’s the third. His grandfather was the first.”

  “And what is it you know about Willie Groves?”

  “I know he was kidnapped yesterday. Joey told me all about it. I didn’t actually see it, but we went back to the school this morning, and we found what we think is his pencil in the gutter right where they grabbed him. We saved it for evidence. In case it has his fingerprints on it, you know. If they’re on file anywhere.”

  Something suddenly occurred to me, and I cleared my throat. “I guess they wouldn’t have to be on file, would they? I mean, you could get fingerprints in his room, on his things. If it’s important to know if it’s his pencil.”

  Pink dug the candy wrapper out of his pocket and handed it over. “We wrapped it up so we wouldn’t smear any prints. It’s a St. Bart’s pencil, see, it says so right on the side of it. We all use them. This one was right where Willie was grabbed. We didn’t find any of the rest of the stuff he dropped, so somebody else must have picked that up.”

  The detective opened the candy wrapper, glanced at the pencil, and dropped it into his own pocket. It wasn’t Pink he responded to, but me. “What do you know about what happened to Willie yesterday?”

  “All day? Or just after school?” I felt really flustered, and I didn’t want to blow it just because I was a kid. This guy acted like he’d listen.

  He hesitated for only a second. “Let’s start with all day.”

  “Well, actually, it was day before yesterday that I gave him the nosebleed,” I said.

  My mother jerked and turned toward me, startled, but didn’t interrupt.

  “It was in PE,” I explained quickly. “I accidentally hit him in the face with my elbow, and he bled a lot. I tried to apologize, but he was mad. He said he was going to get me for it.”

  The detective waited, and I couldn’t tell what he thought.

  “He didn’t catch me after school that night. Ernie came before Willie had a chance to do anything.”

  “Ernie’s our chauffeur,” Mom said in a strained voice.

  “So yesterday Willie bugged me all day, said he was going to beat me up. But one of the teachers—Mr. Soames, the math teacher—was talking to him after school, so I walked out the front door first.” I felt myself getting hot, too, and wondered if I sounded to everybody like a hopeless wimp.

  I wanted to look away from those light blue eyes, but I couldn’t. “So you didn’t see him after that?” he finally prompted.

  “Oh, sure, I saw him. I went out the gate—there’s a fence around St. Bart’s—and the cars were lining up to pick up the kids, but I didn’t see Ernie yet. So I started walking toward the corner, thinking he’d come along. Only he didn’t—he was late. When he came along he said he’d had a fender bender and got held up—and so I walked down in front of that apartment house that’s right next to the school. From there I looked back and saw that Willie had just come out the front door and was looking around.” My face got hotter. “I didn’t know what to do. Willie’s . . . bigger than I am. I didn’t especially want to get pulverized, and I figured if he had the weekend to cool off, maybe he’d forget it.”

  I couldn’t read a thing in the detective’s expression, but I imagined how contemptuous he must be feeling. I cleared my throat again. “Right then a delivery truck drove up, and when the driver buzzed the door at the apartment house, someone let him in. So before the door shut behind him, I . . . I went inside and waited for Willie to give up on me and leave.” I wiped the sweat off my hands onto my pants. “Only he didn’t. He came right up in front of the apartment. He didn’t see through the window, but I could see out. And his car hadn’t come, either, so Willie just stood there. And then that car came, the one with the kidnappers in it.”

  I wondered what it would take to change the man’s facial expression, but I suppose he was used to hearing all kinds of fantastic or horrible things.

  “Can you describe this car?” He reached into a breast pocket and brought out a small notebook and a pen, poised to write, all without taking his attention away from me.

  “This year’s model, a black Chrysler New Yorker. It had a monogram or something on the door, about this big. Gold and red and blue and green, bright enamel. The windows were too dark for me to see the driver, but when it stopped, a guy jumped out and grabbed Willie from behind and dragged him inside to the backseat, and I did see him. I tried telling everyone what had happened, but nobody believed me. I called 9-1-1, but the operator thought I was playing a practical joke, and he said I could get into trouble for making a false crime report—”

  My mother was hearing some of this for the first time, and her mouth was hanging open a little bit.

  “Tell him about—” Pink began, but Detective O’Hara silenced him with a glance.

  “Did you get a license number on this car, son?”

  “No, sir. By the time I got the door open, the car was speeding away. Too far away for me to see.”

  “Did you get a good look at the person who pul
led Willie into the car?”

  “Yes, sir. Only for a few seconds, but I saw him. He wrapped an arm around Willie and pulled him backward, made him drop his books and stuff.”

  “Could you tell how tall he was?” The pen was waiting to write.

  “Not exactly. Taller than Willie, who’s a couple of inches taller than I am.”

  The blue eyes bored into mine. “As tall as I am?” He stood up to make it easier for me to judge.

  “Maybe. Maybe a little taller.”

  “Do you remember his face?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know how to describe it. It was just . . . ordinary. He had black hair. And he was wearing an expensive-looking gold watch, and he had a gold earring, a little tiny one, in this ear.” I touched myself to demonstrate.

  “And did you go back to school to report this?”

  “No. Ernie came right then, and I jumped in the car and told him. Only he didn’t believe me. He thought I was making up a tall story.”

  For a moment I thought I glimpsed a flicker of something in his face, but it was gone so fast I couldn’t be sure.

  “Who else did you tell, besides the chauffeur, and the 9-1-1 operator?

  “Pink,” I said, gesturing at my friend. “I tried to tell Mom, but she was too busy. And my brother, Mark. He said I was full of it. Sophie believed me—she’s my sister. But there wasn’t much she could do. And then Mom finally tried to call Willie’s folks, but his mother was gone, and nobody would talk to her. My father placed a phone call yesterday evening to Mr. William Groves.”

  I think Mom felt the situation had all slipped away from her, and she didn’t like it.

  “Mr. Groves was not taking any phone calls when my husband attempted to talk to him,” she said. She wasn’t used to talking to police officers, and she wasn’t comfortable with having one in our home. “And then Parnell—my husband—had to leave early this morning, so he wasn’t home when Mr. Groves called back. I didn’t know about it until after he’d already been told Parnell wasn’t here.” She waited, seeming to hold her breath.

  Those stiletto eyes rested on me until I started to squirm.

  “You said Willie dropped some ‘stuff’ when he was pulled into the car. Can you describe it?”

  I hesitated. “School stuff. Uh . . . a math book, and a blue notebook. One of the ones they sell at school. A whole bunch of papers fell out and scattered around. A page with a red A– on it. That’s all I can remember.”

  For a moment he was silent, before he turned to my mom. “I’d like Joe to come down to police headquarters and see if he can identify the man he saw. And also maybe work with a police artist in re-creating the man’s face, if the mug shots don’t pan out.”

  The study door opened and Mark stuck his head in, hesitating when he saw the group of us. “Uh, Mom, there’s a caterer on the phone. There’s some kind of problem. He needs to talk to you immediately.”

  “Oh, no!” she moaned, and stood up, glancing anxiously at Detective O’Hara. “Right now? You need Joey right now? Can it wait until my husband shows up?”

  “Later this afternoon will be fine,” the officer said. He handed her a card. “They’ll be expecting him here.”

  “What’s going on?” Mark demanded, looking from one face to the other. “Is this guy a cop?”

  Nobody answered him, but Mark suddenly showed enlightenment anyway. “Holy cow, Joey, was it true? You really saw Willie kidnapped?”

  “Everything being discussed here is strictly confidential,” O’Hara said sharply, and Mark got the benefit of those glacial eyes.

  “Yes, sir,” Mark said. “I’ll tell the caterer you’re on your way, Mom.”

  They left us in the study, Pink and me. He let out a deep breath. “Wow! Just like on TV, Joey! Boy, wait’ll we tell the other guys at school!”

  “Not before they get Willie back,” I warned him.

  “Yeah, sure. Wow! I wonder if they’ll interview you for the ten o’clock news?”

  Chapter Seven

  By the time we got as far as the kitchen, we found Mom on the phone again, saying, “Oh, no!” one more time. Then she said, “Yes, I’ll hold,” and I figured it was safe to interrupt.

  “Mom, am I going to have to disappear into my room once the party starts?”

  “That would be a good idea,” she agreed. “Why don’t you rent a video or two for the evening?”

  “Okay. Would it be all right if Pink stays over, too? So it won’t be so boring by myself?”

  “Fine, if it’s okay with his parents. Yes, Mr. Cardoni, I understand that. What can we do instead?”

  She flipped a hand, dismissing me, and Pink and I went on back to my room to discuss what movie we wanted to see. Mark stuck his head out of his doorway as we passed it.

  “Is it true, Joey? Was old Willie kidnapped?”

  “I guess so. I told you that, and you said I was full of it.”

  “Well, you usually are, so how did I know that for once you weren’t making up some far-out story? Did that detective admit it, then?”

  “He didn’t admit anything. He didn’t suggest anything. He didn’t answer a single question any of us asked him. He just asked his own questions.”

  “He wanted details about the kidnapping, what Joe saw,” Pink offered. “So it’s gotta be true, doesn’t it? Why else would he have come? And Joey’s got to go down to the police station and look at mug books and maybe work with a police artist to come up with a sketch of the guy who grabbed Willie.”

  Mark whistled, impressed. “Does Dad know yet?”

  “No. Mom asked if I could wait until he came home, to take me down there.”

  Mark grinned. “Boy, he’s going to be irked. Mom, too. She was expecting him to help with something or other. And Ernie’s hiding from her, I think, so she won’t give him any more orders. He was grumbling about being hired to be a chauffeur, not an errand and delivery boy. Too bad I don’t have my license yet, I could run the errands for them.”

  “No way is Mom going to let you drive in the city,” I told him, pretty sure I was right. “Maybe next summer, if we go up to Grandma Charlotte’s on the farm, they might let you drive there. On back country roads.”

  “You’re just jealous because you can’t drive for years yet. In or out of the city.” He didn’t want to talk about that. “Mug shot, huh? I wonder if they’ll put the picture on TV and in the papers if you identify him? You know, if the guy finds out you saw him, and could identify him, he might come after you, Joey.”

  I hadn’t thought of that, and I didn’t like it much. “How would he find out?”

  “I don’t know. Reporters always manage to find out that kind of stuff, and they don’t keep it a secret.”

  Pink didn’t usually talk much when Mark was around, but he spoke up now. “Maybe he already knows, Joe. Maybe he was the guy who almost ran us down.”

  Mark had been heading back into his room, but he paused. “Somebody almost ran you down? When?”

  “Just a little while ago,” I said reluctantly. “He was just some creep in a cab who gunned it around a corner while we were trying to get across the street. You know how everybody drives in this city.”

  Mark acted like he was taking it seriously. “Funny coincidence, though, right? Just after you saw Willie kidnapped, and before you talked to the cops?”

  Pink looked serious, too. “It was almost as if he intended to run over us, Joe. And he didn’t stop.”

  “Does anybody ever stop, unless his own car is too damaged to run or he’s penned in by traffic?”

  “He’d have got us, for sure, if that Camaro hadn’t pulled out and got in his way,” Pink said. “Maybe you better be careful.”

  It didn’t seem likely, but the idea made me uneasy.

  “Well,” Mark said cheerfully, “watch your back, little brother.”

  I glared after him when he went back in his room. As soon as we’d closed my bedroom door, I demanded of Pink, “You don’t really believe what you sai
d, do you? That the cab driver was trying to hit us? To hit me?”

  “Could have been,” Pink said. He flopped onto my bed. “It’s true what Mark said, you know. If the kidnapper knew you saw him and could identify him . . .”

  I scowled. He sounded as bad as my brother. “He didn’t see me. I told you. And even if he had, he wouldn’t have known who I was. The most he could possibly have seen was part of my face through a dirty window, for pete’s sake.”

  “For the sake of argument,” Pink suggested, “say somehow he did find out who you were. He might try to keep you from talking to anybody. Especially the police.”

  “But how would he have known where I was?”

  “He could have been watching this apartment house. He could have followed us and been waiting for a chance at you.”

  “In a battered old taxi?” I scoffed, but my heart was beating faster.

  “Maybe that’s what he usually drives. Maybe he borrowed it from a friend. Maybe he rented it. More likely he stole it.”

  “But he was in an expensive late-model car when he kidnapped Willie.”

  “That might have been stolen, too. Or maybe he drives it for someone else. You know, he could be a chauffeur who had seen Willie at the school when he was picking up someone else’s kid, and decided to pad his income with a little ransom money.”

  I didn’t like the way Pink was coming up with logical answers to everything. “But there’s no way he could have known who I was,” I persisted. “So everything else is a fairy tale.”

  Pink even had an answer to that. “Maybe Willie told him.”

  Exasperated, I wanted to kick him. “How could Willie tell him? He didn’t see me, either!”

  “Maybe not, but Willie was chasing you, wasn’t he? The only reason he was in front of the door where you were hiding was that he was trying to find you to beat you up, and he told the kidnappers you’d disappeared right about there. They could have figured out you were hiding from Willie and saw them.”

  “Why would he have told them?”

  “Because they tortured him, wanting to know why he was where he was instead of in front of the school, waiting to be picked up.”