by Dan Walsh
Meanwhile, his brother was sitting beside a total stranger, getting farther and farther away.
Finally, the older policeman left his squad car and walked toward the younger officer. As he talked, the younger man nodded. They both looked in Colt’s direction then started walking his way. Everyone’s eyes now followed them, not the truck caravan. The policemen walked up to the waitress, who stood behind the counter about fifteen feet away. “We’ve got to go. There’s been an accident a few minutes south of here. Some idiot ran a red light, smacked right into the side of an Army truck.”
“What about the boy?” the waitress said.
“It’s like I said, it’s a kidnapping, the FBI’s jurisdiction. I was just told they’ve been notified and they’re on their way.”
“Here?”
“Of course here.”
“Hey, Syd, shouldn’t the boy’s parents be told? They been called yet?” It was the younger police officer. The older officer looked at the waitress.
“I don’t know if they’ve been called,” the waitress said. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, look, we gotta go. Can you make sure that happens? Hey, kid,” the younger cop said, looking at Colt. “Give her your telephone number.”
The cops turned and hurried out the door. Moments later, the squad car sped off, sirens wailing and lights flashing.
The waitress came over to Colt. “The FBI is coming. They’ll know what to do. Here . . .” She handed him her pen and pulled a napkin out of the holder. “Can you write your telephone number down?”
He certainly didn’t want anyone calling his parents. Not yet anyway. They’d kill him if they knew what he had done. “They’re probably not home. They both work during the day. How about I call my Aunt Rose? They’re the ones we were taking the bus to go see. They live in Savannah.”
“I suppose that’ll be okay,” she said. “Just make sure they call your parents as soon as they get home from work.”
“I will.”
She looked down at the empty table. “Still not hungry?”
“No.”
“How about something to drink?”
“I don’t have enough money.”
“It’s on the house.”
“Maybe a Coca-Cola then.”
“You want me to make that a cherry Coke?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Coming right up.” She walked away.
He reached down on the seat and picked up his brother’s Hulk comic book, opened up the first few pages. He’d read it maybe twice already, mainly looking at the pictures. But he was glad for anything to occupy his mind.
“You like comic books?” The waitress set down his cherry Coke.
“What? No, this is my brother’s. I like them okay, but I’m more into collecting baseball cards.”
“Really? My nephew does that. He’s about your age. Who do you got?”
He knew she was just trying to be nice. He didn’t really feel like talking. “I got a whole shoe box full of them under my bed. Got two or three of the best players.”
“How’d you get so many?” she asked.
“We buy ’em every time the ice cream truck comes by. For a nickel you get five cards and a piece of Bazooka gum. I keep the good ones in that shoe box and the ones I wanna trade in a cigar box. When my friends come over, we got this game we play on the patio. My mom says it’s gambling, but my dad says it’s not really, so we keep doing it.” Maybe he didn’t mind talking about it, after all. And it was getting his mind off the bad things going on.
“I think my nephew plays the same game,” she said. “You toss them across the patio, see who gets closest to the wall.”
“That’s it. The closest one wins them all. I always try to get leaners.”
“Leaners?” she asked.
“Yeah, if you do it just right, they flip up just as they get to the wall and lean against it. If the other guys can’t knock it down, it’s an automatic win.”
“You pretty good at that?”
“Better than anyone else on my street,” he said.
“Hey, Doris, we got paying customers over here. You gonna stand there all day yapping?”
Colt looked up toward the deep voice. Looked like the cook. He’d come out of the kitchen wearing a T-shirt and a dirty white apron.
“I’ll be right back,” Doris whispered. She walked toward the man. “Have a heart, Ed. The boy’s having a bad time.” She was talking quietly, but Colt heard every word. “His brother’s missing, some guy took him on one of those buses that was here awhile ago. I’ll only be a few more minutes. FBI’s on their way. Besides, Sadie and Joan said they’d cover for me a few minutes.”
The cook looked at the two other waitresses. One was refilling a cup of coffee by the counter, the other wiping down a table.
“Anyway, we’re in a lull till the dinner crowd starts to show up.”
“Not if another bus pulls up.”
“Oh . . . get on back into the kitchen. You’re fussing over nothing.”
He made a face, then started to turn around but stopped. Something out the front window had caught his eye. “Looks like they’re here.”
She turned to look, then Colt did the same. A large black car had just pulled up. Two men in dark suits and dark hats got out. Both wore white shirts and thin black ties. They headed right for the front door of the diner. Instantly, he tensed up. They looked just like the FBI guys in the movies, serious faces, eyes looking straight ahead.
When they got a little closer, he could see little wrinkles around their eyes. Both men looked older than the police officers.
Doris walked up to them. “You guys from the FBI?”
Everybody stared at them now, but some looked back and forth, first at them, then at Colt. He heard the agents say yes, they were. Both showed her their IDs. He could see the blue FBI letters clearly from his seat. “I’m Special Agent Victor Hammond,” the first one said. “And this is my partner, Nate Winters.”
Then they both looked right at Colt.
14
Special Agent Victor Hammond had a gut feeling about this when they had gotten the call. In his experience, most kidnapping cases were nothing more than short-term custody battles between divorced parents. Usually the culprit was a dad fed up with how little he got to see his children under the new arrangement. And usually, once she got her kids back, the ex-wife didn’t want to press charges. If her ex-hubby went to prison, the alimony and child support would dry up. And the fathers, facing life in prison on a kidnapping charge, would suddenly have a change of heart and promise to behave from now on.
But this situation felt different.
Vic glanced over at the boy sitting in the booth. A scared look in his eyes. Vic leaned over to his partner Nate, who was smoking a cigarette, and whispered, “Let’s go easy on him.”
“Sure, Vic.”
He and Nate had worked together off and on since the forties, during the war. Vic trusted no one more.
“Wow, you guys got here fast,” the waitress said. “Isn’t your office downtown?”
Vic nodded.
“That’s thirty minutes south of here,” she said. “The police couldn’t have put in the call more than ten minutes ago. Were you already in the neighborhood?”
“That’s classified,” Nate said. He liked to give that answer to nosy questions.
“Something to do with all these Army trucks and tanks?” she asked.
“Something like that.”
“What’s the boy’s name?” Vic asked.
“Sorry, I never asked.”
They walked over to the boy. “Mind if I sit down?” Vic asked, pointing at the empty seat across the table.
“No.”
Vic took off his hat and sat in the booth. “Pull up a chair, Nate.” He did his best to sound friendly and at ease. “I understand your brother has gone missing?”
“He isn’t missing. Some man took him. They drove off in a bus together a little while ago, an
d no one’s even started looking for him.”
“And you definitely didn’t know this man?”
“I never saw him before. He wasn’t even on our bus. They got on a bus going south, back toward the city. Our bus was going north, toward Savannah.”
“Who’s in Savannah?” Vic asked.
“Our aunt and uncle,” the boy said.
“Where are your parents?”
“Back in Daytona, where we live.” The boy shifted in his seat.
This seemed a little strange to Vic. And the way the boy was tensing up just now, he was giving off signals that he was hiding something. “Mind if I ask what you and your brother were doing traveling on a bus, on a Monday? Isn’t this a school day?”
A long pause. The kid was trying to think up a good one.
“It . . . usually is. But we got the day off. Just today, to visit Uncle Mike and Aunt Rose.”
“Why?” Vic asked. “Why didn’t your parents send you on Friday, when you’d have two whole days to visit? Don’t you have to be back in school tomorrow?”
The boy looked away. He was about to cry any minute.
“What’s your name?” Vic asked gently.
“Colt,” he said. “My little brother’s name is Timmy.”
“How old are you, Colt?”
“I’m eleven, Timmy’s six.”
He needed to press harder, pull on these threads a little more. “Your parents know what happened? About your brother, I mean?”
He shook his head no. “They’re at work. I haven’t called them yet. They wouldn’t be home if I did. I guess my Uncle Mike was supposed to call them once we got to Savannah.”
“So, have you called them, your aunt and uncle?”
“Not yet. I was going to just before you got here.”
“You sure they’re home?”
“Aunt Rose is. She’s a housewife. She’s always home, like my mom used to be.”
He said this with a pronounced sadness, even looked down as he finished the sentence. If Vic’s hunch was correct, a story was taking shape. He glanced at Nate, who nodded. Nate was probably thinking the same thing. “You and your brother go to the same school?”
“Yeah,” the boy said. “But just for one more year. Next year, I start going to junior high. But . . .” He took a deep breath. “Why are you asking me all these questions? Shouldn’t you be out there looking for my brother? Figuring out where that bus is going?”
Vic wished it was that simple, but he had worked several cases involving Greyhound buses. There were so many routes and so many different stations, just in Florida alone. To make matters worse, he’d already been told almost every available agent in the South was going to be pulled off regular duty because of this business with Cuba. Something the whole country was going to find out about tonight, after the president went on television.
Normally, a little boy getting snatched at a diner by some creep would take precedence over anything else. But not now, with maybe the whole world being blown to bits. That was the buzz around the watercooler downtown. All the secrecy surrounding these troop movements heading south. The special agent in charge of their field office in Orlando had hinted that some kind of D-Day invasion of Cuba might happen before the week was out.
Vic couldn’t fathom it.
“Look, son,” Nate said, “this is a little more complicated than that. The information we got said the bus driver who left you here didn’t even know which bus it was or where it was going, except it was heading south. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir,” Colt said.
Vic wished Nate would lighten up a little. The boy was definitely hiding something, but his little brother really was missing. “And I’m sure you’ve seen all those tanks and trucks going by today,” Vic said. Colt nodded. “They’re causing all kinds of problems, car accidents, traffic jams, all kinds of things. A lot of law enforcement officers have their hands full right now. We might be handling this case without a lot of help. So, we need to ask these questions so we know what we’re dealing with. You understand?”
Colt nodded again. “I guess.” He glanced out the window. “You know what’s going on out there? Are we going to war?”
“Let’s not worry about that now,” Vic said. “I got just a few more questions, then we can call your aunt. What was her name again?”
“Rose.”
“Right, Rose. Okay . . . so what time did your mother drop you off at school this morning?”
“The same time she always did.”
“But didn’t you just say,” Nate interjected, “your parents gave you the day off school to visit your aunt and uncle in Savannah?”
“What? Oh yeah,” Colt said. “They did. I meant what time they dropped us off at the bus station.”
“C’mon, Colt. Be straight with me,” Vic said. “You were telling the truth the first time, weren’t you? Your mom dropped you and your brother off at school this morning. Then you guys left school for some reason and got on a bus going to Savannah. Isn’t that what really happened?”
Colt’s mouth hung open. Tears filled his eyes.
“I’ll bet your folks don’t even know you got on that bus, you and your brother. Do they?”
Colt shook his head no.
“Did your aunt and uncle even know you two were coming for a visit?”
Again, he shook his head no.
Vic leaned forward on the table, tried to form a gentle look on his face. “Why, Colt? Were you guys running away? Is that what was going on here? Some problems at home between your mom and your dad?”
Colt put his face in his hands and burst into tears.
Vic hated being right about stuff like this.
15
At this point, Colt just wanted to run. Go anywhere, be anywhere but here.
But how could he? The two FBI agents were standing right behind him. Somehow, they had figured out his whole scheme. It was shot to pieces now. Nothing had gone the way he’d planned. He should’ve listened to Murph, his best friend. Murph lived across the street. He’d told Colt not to do this, said it could never work. Colt thought he was just being negative. He could be that way sometimes.
This time Murph was right.
Colt looked at the telephone. How could he tell Uncle Mike and Aunt Rose what he had done? He was supposed to show up there with Timmy. They would’ve been upset at first, because of the surprise, maybe even get a little angry. But he figured since they were so nice, they’d get over it quickly and shift their focus to the reason he and Timmy were there. They’d start asking them questions about how bad things had gotten at home between Mom and Dad. The way they were treating them now, and had been for months. Colt’s parents would be the ones getting in trouble.
But now Timmy was gone, and it was all his fault.
“You know the number?” It was the FBI agent who smoked, the meaner one.
“I wrote it down.” Colt pulled the napkin out of his pocket, unwrinkled it, and set it on the counter next to the telephone.
“Take your time,” Vic, the nicer one, said. “You know how to reverse the charges? Want me to handle that?”
“No, I can do it.” Colt dialed the operator, told her what he was trying to do, gave her the number. A few moments later, he heard her and Aunt Rose talking on the phone. As soon as she heard it was him calling, she instantly said she’d accept the charges. The operator connected them.
“Colt, that you? What’s wrong, honey? Why are you calling?”
“Yes, it’s me, Aunt Rose.” He was about to say everything was all right, but it wasn’t. “It’s kind of a long story, Aunt Rose. Mom and Dad are separated and—”
“What?”
“Mom and Dad are separated. They’re not getting along for some reason. They won’t tell us why. It’s been going on since last Christmas.”
“Last Christmas? That’s almost a year. They’ve been separated all this time?”
“Yeah, and see, the thing is, they’ve been making Timmy and me li
e about it, all this time, to everyone. Folks in the family, in our neighborhood, even at our school. Timmy and I were getting really tired of it. And the way they were treating us. We were so unhappy, all the time.”
“I’m so sorry, Colt,” she said. “Little boys shouldn’t have to deal with things like that.”
No, they shouldn’t, he thought. But that was something he wanted to hear her say with him standing there in her living room, him and Timmy. Wait till she hears the rest of what I have to say, he thought.
“You better get to the main point,” the smoking FBI agent said. “It’s long distance.”
“Give him a minute, Nate,” Vic said.
“Listen, Aunt Rose, that’s not why I called. Something’s happened. Something bad.”
“What’s the matter?” she said.
“It’s Timmy, he’s . . .” Colt started to lose it. He couldn’t say the word. Vic, the nicer agent, took the phone from him as he started to cry.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but Colt is pretty upset. I better explain, at least what I know. Give him a minute to calm down.” Vic reached over on the counter for a clean napkin and handed it to Colt.
“Who are you? What’s going on?”
“I’m Special Agent Victor Hammond, with the FBI.”
“FBI?”
“Yes, the FBI. You already heard Colt talking about the problems he’s having at home. Apparently, he and Timmy decided to run away this morning. After their mom dropped them off at school, they hopped on a Greyhound bus heading for Savannah, intending to visit you and your husband. Are you . . . what’s your relationship to Colt’s parents?”
“I’m his mother’s younger sister. Mike and I had a feeling something wasn’t quite right in their relationship, Scott seemed so—”
“Scott’s his father’s name?”
“Yes, Scott and Gina. That’s my sister’s name. But I don’t understand . . . you said they took a Greyhound bus to Savannah. Where are they now?”
