There was another knock on the door, and this time it was the patrol officers. Truman told them about the call and one of the officers called headquarters. “There’s a detective on the way,” he told Cheryl.
Within ten minutes the detective, a short, round-faced man named Matt Carmichael, was sitting in the living room with them.
Truman repeated the whole story, leaving out only one detail, the part about how he and Jackleen used the disk to win six thousand dollars.
“We were afraid to tell the police,” Truman said lamely. “I guess we were naive to think we could find out who really killed Rosie.”
Cheryl had been standing with her back to them, staring out the window into the darkness. She turned around.
“When they call back, tell them we’ll give them the disk. The disk, money, whatever they want. I just want my son.” Truman looked stricken. “I don’t have the disk.” Carmichael sighed. “Where is it?”
“I decided things were getting dangerous,” Truman said. “I put it in an envelope and mailed it.”
“Mailed it where?” Cheryl shrieked. “My God, Dad.”
“I sent it to Ollie at the newsstand,” Truman said. “Nobody would think of looking for it there.”
“When did you do this?” Carmichael asked. “Tuesday,” Truman said. “Day before yesterday. Tomorrow’s Friday. It ought to be there by then.”
The telephone rang. Cheryl looked panicky. “What if it’s them?”
“Let your dad pick it up,” Carmichael said. “Try to keep them on the line.”
Truman dashed into the kitchen, followed by the others.
“Hello,” he said, slightly out of breath.
“Have you got the disk?” It was the same voice as before.
“No, not right now,” Truman said. “I’ll have it tomorrow.”
“You don’t get the kid till we get the disk,” the voice said. It was impossible to tell whether the caller was a male or female.
“I don’t have it,” Truman said. “I mailed it someplace. To keep it safe. It won’t be delivered until tomorrow.”
“Get it or the lad dies,” the caller said. “We’ll be in touch.”
At some point during the night a police electronics expert arrived and hooked up call-tracing equipment to the phones.
Neighbors came and went with sandwiches and casseroles and loving words and anxious expressions.
Carmichael left briefly, and when he returned he was accompanied by a tall, thin black man named Kenyon. He was an FBI agent. Truman never did catch his first name. He told Kenyon his story, told him about the blonde and the man who grabbed Jackie and the one who’d assaulted Pearl and how someone had searched Mel’s room at the nursing home.
Carmichael was dispatched to pick up Jackleen.
Jackie looked miserable as she recounted the story. She kept glancing at Cheryl. “I’m so sorry,” she told her. “So sorry.” Truman gave her a warning glance; she left out the part about the money.
“It doesn’t matter,” Cheryl said. “I just want my boy.”
By midnight, they were all numb with fear and exhaustion.
Bobby Roberts left reluctantly, promising to return the next day after his shift. Carmichael took Jackie back home.
Kenyon stayed in the kitchen where he could be close to the phone. Cheryl insisted on sleeping in Chip’s bed. Truman lay down on the living room sofa, vowing to stay awake until the kidnappers called again.
When he awoke at dawn the numbness had worn off. He looked in the mirror in the bathroom and saw someone he didn’t recognize. An old man. Useless, defeated. He’d intended to shave and shower. Instead he dressed and dragged himself into the kitchen.
Kenyon and Cheryl sat at the table drinking coffee. The morning newspaper lay on the table between them.
“It’s in the paper,” Cheryl said.
missing boy feared kidnap victim the headline said. There was a color photo of Chip. The story had most of the details right. Except for the motive. “Police refused to divulge the kidnapper’s demands,” the story said, noting that Chip’s mother was a divorced schoolteacher and that his grandfather was a retired reporter.
“A polite way of saying we’re too poor to pay a ransom,” Truman said.
They moved through the morning like sleepwalkers.
By daylight, a knot of people had gathered on the street in front of the house. Cars drove by slowly. There were reporters and photographers, mobile satellite vans from the television stations.
At eleven, Carmichael got a telephone call and left, saying he’d be back. He returned with a familiar-looking manila envelope.
“Picked this up at the main post office,” he explained.
Gingerly Truman took the envelope and opened it. The seal had already been broken. He looked up, surprised.
“We made copies of the disk,” Carmichael said. “Kept the original for evidence. It’s identical in every way to the original.”
“We’ll hand this over to the kidnappers and they’ll let Chip go?” Truman asked.
The men looked at each other and shrugged. “Maybe,” Kenyon said. “They’re calling the shots. It’s up to them. When they let us know about the pickup, we’ll start planning. We’ll get the boy back.”
“When they call,” Carmichael reminded Truman, “ask to speak to Chip. Ask how he is. And make sure they tell you exactly where the pickup is to be. Get them to repeat it if you can.”
“It’s been in all the papers. All over the news,” Cheryl pointed out. “Won’t they know the police are involved?”
“Yeah,” Carmichael said. “But do it anyway.”
Each time the phone rang that morning, they all jumped nervously. Each time Cheryl got the caller off the line as fast as possible.
At 11:25 the kidnappers called. Truman picked up the phone.
“Listen up,” the caller said. “Tomorrow, 11 am. You stand on the northeast corner of Beach Drive and Third Avenue. Alone. No cops. You’ll hear from us. Got that?”
Truman was scribbling furiously. “Wait. I want to talk to Chip.”
“He’s asleep.” There was nothing else except the dial tone.
“Is he okay?” Cheryl asked. “Did you talk to him?”
Truman rubbed his eyes with his fists. “I’m sorry,” he said. “They said he was asleep, then they hung up.”
Kenyon took off the headset that had been plugged into the kitchen phone so he could listen in. He picked up the phone the police had installed the night before and dialed a number.
“Get anything?” Kenyon asked the person doing the tracing. He listened for a moment, then hung up.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” he said. “All that static on the line. The call came from a cellular phone.”
“What’s that mean?” Truman asked.
“One of those portable phones, like the ones house-wives carry in their purses and drug dealers carry in their cars,” Carmichael said.
“Can’t they trace calls from one of those?”
“Not if it’s stolen,” Kenyon said. “And this one was.”
“Tell me what they said,” Cheryl demanded.
“The pickup is set for 11 am tomorrow at the north-east corner of Beach Drive and Third Avenue,” Kenyon said.
“Tomorrow? Christ!” Carmichael said disgustedly.
“What?” Cheryl asked anxiously. “What’s wrong?”
“The Festival of States parade is tomorrow,” Carmichael said.
“Oh my God,” Cheryl said. “I’d forgotten about the parade.”
“You wouldn’t if you were a cop,” Carmichael said grimly. “Starting at 10 am. that corner is right on the parade route. There’ll be almost four hundred thousand people lined up shoulder to shoulder along Beach Drive. Streets will be blocked off, every cop in town has traffic detail.”
“Northeast corner of Beach and Third,” Truman repeated, trying to picture it. “That’s Little St. Mary’s.”
“A church?” Kenyon asked.
Carmichael cracked a smile. It was the first one anybody had seen in the house in nearly twenty-four hours.
“It’s a bathroom,” Carmichael explained. “Sixty years ago this builder had a beef with St. Mary’s Church. You know, the big red brick one on Fourth Street South? Something about unpaid bills. I heard they stiffed the guy. So a few years later he’s hired to build restrooms for the city right there at Beach Drive at the foot of the Municipal Pier. He builds the most beautiful civic outhouse you ever saw—an exact miniature of the church.”
“You’ll see it tomorrow,” Carmichael promised. “Up close and personal.”
Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN
It had been years since Truman had seen a Festival of States parade. When Cheryl was a kid, he and Nellie went every year. They sat on the same corner every year, outside Mastry’s Bar and Grill, ate the same ham sandwiches, and cheered for the same beauty queens. They loved the bands and elaborate floats—but Cheryl always covered her ears when the Hernando de Soto Festival float came into view, bristling with savage buccaneers and a live, booming cannon.
Today they were on a different corner, but Cheryl was with him, clutching his hand as tightly as she had when she was eight. The corner was thronged with people; they’d had to jostle their way through the mob, even at 8 a.m., to claim a spot on the curb.
“Dad, I’m scared,” Cheryl confessed. Her hand in his was sweaty, or was it his hand? It was ten-forty-five, almost two hours into the parade. Dark clouds had threatened rain around nine, but mercifully the clouds scudded off to the west and the sun burned its way through the morning mists. Now it beat down mercilessly, eighty-seven degrees already.
Truman squeezed Cheryl’s hand. “It’ll be all right, honey. We’ve got company, remember?”
Standing right next to them, wearing a sun visor and loud plaid shorts, was a female police detective named Mindy. There were more plainclothes detectives lurking around inside and outside Little St. Mary’s. Across the street, wearing a fishing vest and carrying a long-lens 35mm camera and a press badge, was Matt Carmichael.
Kenyon, the FBI man, had passed by twice, pushing a shopping cart loaded with stuffed animals, bags of cotton candy, and helium-filled balloons.
There were still more cops stationed up and down the parade route. “Oh,” Cheryl said, glancing to her right. “Don’t look, Dad, but Bobby’s right there.”
“Where?” Truman asked, glancing around.
“I told you not to look,” she chided him. “He’s standing on the curb. He’s got on a white baseball cap and he’s carrying binoculars.”
“Look,” Truman said, pointing up the street. “Here comes the Shriner units. Remember how much you used to love their funny cars and all the clowns?” Under his breath he muttered, “I see him now.”
Cheryl snorted. “As I recall, you were the one who was so enthralled by those silly Shriners. You used to threaten Mama that you’d join the Shriners just so you could drive one of those go-carts.”
“Hey, Dad,” Cheryl said, nodding slightly to their left. “Didn’t you say Jackleen was supposed to work today?”
Truman turned and saw Jackie standing half a block down, staring intently at the passing unit, which consisted of eight old rattletrap Model A pickup trucks loaded with members of a hillbilly band. The cars bucked and snorted, backfired and spewed black smoke all over the street, drawing screams of laughter from the crowd.
“She was supposed to work, but I knew she’d be down here,” Truman said. “She feels as bad as I do about the whole thing.”
“It’s five of,” Cheryl said, glancing down at her watch.
“I can’t take this. I really can’t. Do you think they’ll bring Chip with them?”
“They might,” he said. Secretly he figured if the kidnappers made good on their promise, they would leave Chip somewhere else. A parade with four hundred thousand witnesses was just too risky.
“Think about something else, honey. Hey. You know, we’ve never brought Chip down to this parade, have we?”
“Not since he was a baby,” Cheryl said sadly.
“Next year, what say we do it? Bring him down to Mastry’s, sit on the curb together?”
“I’ll make the ham sandwiches,” Cheryl said, attempting a smile.
They heard a sudden roar then and the hillbilly unit gave way to a battalion of motorcycle-riding Shriners. The riders wore jeweled red fezzes, red jackets, and rode the biggest, loudest Harley-Davidsons Truman had ever seen. Slowly, they rode in and out of fancy formations—stars, interlocking circles, pinwheels.
From out of nowhere three dozen red-wigged clowns on mopeds swarmed the street. The clowns buzzed in and out of the motorcycle formations like small, annoying gnats, riding inches away from the powerful Harleys, then veering away only seconds before a collision. The street filled with the thick white smoke from the motorcycles’ exhausts.
Next the clowns launched an assault on the crowds lining the streets, careening toward a throng and screeching to a heart-stopping halt right at the curb, pitching handfuls of candy and phony foil doubloons, causing adults and children to spill onto the pavement to grab for the treats.
Truman bent down to pick up a piece of candy at his feet.
“The disk, man, gimme the disk.” A moped-riding clown sped up alongside Truman, so close he could see the cracks in the clown’s white pancake makeup.
He heard Cheryl gasp, and without thinking he held out the disk. A moment later the clown disappeared into the smoke-filled street, joining three dozen other identical clowns on wheels.
Truman turned to the plainclothes detective beside him, but she was gone, running into the street, trying to get closer to the clown unit.
Carmichael, across the street, had seen the exchange take place through the long lens of his camera. He was sprinting along the other side of the street, trying vainly to keep up with the unit, which was moving in a ragged formation rapidly down the block.
Now Kenyon came running past, his shopping cart abandoned.
“Where’s Chip?” Cheryl cried, her voice cracking. “Where is he?”
Bobby Roberts rushed over. “What happened?” he asked. “I couldn’t see anything. One of those Harleys nearly mowed me down.”
“A clown. On a moped,” Truman said, craning his neck to see up the street. “He took the disk. Carmichael and Kenyon are following them.”
By now the motorcycle unit was a distant hum. The parade finish line was two blocks down the street.
Two police motorcycle units roared down the street past Truman and Cheryl, sirens blaring, lights flashing.
“I’m going to see if they need any help,” Bobby said, dashing off.
Cheryl buried her head in Truman’s shoulder. “What happens now?” she asked.
They had agreed to meet under the banyan trees in Bayboro Park, near the parade finish line, by no later than eleven-thirty. They had to fight their way through throngs of people, packing up to leave.
The streets were clogged with traffic, all of it at a standstill. Uniformed traffic cops tried vainly to unsnarl the mess, and frustrated motorists sat in their unmoving cars, honking horns out of boredom.
Carmichael was standing under the banyan tree, gulping water from a cup when they arrived. His face glowed beet red and his shirt was drenched with sweat.
“We lost him,” he said glumly. “Kenyon didn’t want us getting too close, afraid we’d spook the guy. We followed that clown unit all the way to the finish line, right down by the Yacht Basin. You know how many guys they got dressed in those clown outfits? Forty- two.”
“Lost him?” Cheryl said incredulously. “What does that mean?”
“We did find the guy who owned the moped, locked in one of those motorcycle trailers,” Carmichael said. “Guy nearly died of heat prostration too. It must have been over one hundred fifteen degrees in there.”
“Did he see who stole the moped?”
“Nah,” Carmichael said. “Those guys have
been up, drinking beer, partying, since 7 am. Our guy went behind his trailer to take a leak, somebody hit him on the head. Next thing he knows, he’s in his skivvies, minus his costume, locked inside the trailer.”
Kenyon walked up now, mopping his own sweat- streaked face with a handkerchief. “We found the moped,” he reported. “It was abandoned behind a construction trailer a few blocks from here. They’re processing it now for prints.”
“The clown wore white gloves,” Truman said.
“Figures,” Kenyon said. He put his hand on Truman’s shoulder. “We need to get you and your daughter back to her house. They’ve got what they want now. They know that the longer they keep Chip, the riskier it is that they’ll get caught.”
Cheryl’s face was pale, drained of emotion. “They’ll call now, right, Mr. Kenyon? To tell us where Chip is?”
“Hey, Mr. K!” It was Jackleen, jogging toward the group, a tall plastic drink cup in each hand.
“I brought you a drink,” she said as she drew closer. “Y’all like blueberry Slur—”
She was almost beside them when her foot caught something and she tripped.
Truman reached out and grabbed her arm to keep her from falling, and twenty ounces of icy blue ooze sloshed down his shirtfront.
“—pees?” Jackleen righted herself and looked at the empty cup, then at Truman. His shirt and trousers were covered with Slurpee. “Oh no,” she gasped.
Kenyon handed Truman his handkerchief, and Truman dabbed ineffectively at the mess.
“I’m so sorry,” Jackie wailed.
“Look at this,” Truman said, annoyed. “This stuff is sticky as hell.” He looked at Jackie. “Can you give me a ride back to the hotel so I can change?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’m parked in a lot two blocks away, shouldn’t take any time to get there.”
Kenyon glanced down at his watch. “We’ll take you home, Cheryl. They could call at any time. Mr. Kicklighter, should we send someone to the hotel to get you?”
“I’ll be right there,” Truman promised. “Jackie can bring me.”
Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 01 - Lickety-Split Page 22
