by Mark Gimenez
Now, seeing her at the top of the stairs, her red hair and fair complexion glowing in the light of the dome—still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen—the love that Ben Brice had tried to drown in whiskey along with the pain returned with such force he thought his knees might buckle; instead, tears came to his eyes— she was still wearing her wedding ring. A devout Irish Catholic, she would never divorce her husband but could no longer live with a drunk; a devout drunk, he would never love another woman but could not live without a drink.
She descended the stairs, and Ben could tell that she had cried through the night. He knew because he had caused this woman to cry through many nights. Not that he had ever touched her in anger. Ben Brice was not a mean drunk. He was a silent one. The more he drank, the deeper inside himself he burrowed, battling the demons within and leaving his wife to cry herself to sleep. His soul was stained with her tears. Five years since he had seen her, touched her, held her, he ached to hold her now; but he stood paralyzed, like a buck private facing a four-star general.
She knew.
She came to him and buried her face in his chest. Ben pulled her tight and breathed in her scent as if for the first time. And for a brief moment, it was thirty-eight years earlier when the world still made sense. She sighed deeply, almost a cry, and he felt her slim body sag slightly.
“Oh, Ben. What if he hurts her?”
“We’ll get her back, Kate. We’ll pay the ransom and get her back.”
They stood holding each other as strangers and thirty-eight years of their lives rushed past—the good times, the bad times, and more bad times. Ben had always held onto the good times to get through the bad times; she had lost her grip ten years ago. Standing there, they didn’t have to say what they both knew: no time would be as bad as this time.
“Grandpa!”
Ben looked down at his grandson clutching his legs. The Hispanic woman arrived in a rush and out of breath.
“Señor Sam, the oatmeal, you must eat.”
From below: “I don’t want no stinkin’ oatmeal!”
Ben Brice embraced his family. Except John. He was gone.
“What the hell’s he doing here?”
Elizabeth ambushed her husband as soon as he set foot in the kitchen; he flinched and his hands flew up to his face then fell once he realized she wasn’t going to slap him again.
“I don’t want that drunk in my house!”
John did not respond. Instead, he wandered into the butler’s pantry, as if hunting for a place to hide. She stared after her husband and shook her head: utterly useless in a fight.
“Mrs. Brice.”
Agent Devereaux was at the kitchen door.
Ben was standing at the staircase with his family and the young Hispanic woman when a middle-aged FBI agent appeared with Elizabeth. Ben looked at her and she looked away.
“Kate,” Elizabeth said, “would you get the photo of Grace from our room, for Agent Devereaux? And something she wore yesterday, something that hasn’t been washed. Maybe her school uniform. Chief Ryan needs it. He’s in the dining room.” She then said down to Sam, “Have you eaten breakfast yet?”
Sam, from below: “I claim the Fourth Amendment.”
“Fifth.”
“Fifth what?”
“It’s the Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate yourself.”
“Whatever.”
Elizabeth exhaled and turned to the Hispanic woman. “Hilda?”
Hilda threw her arms up. “Señora, he runs like the wind.”
Sam, trying to hide between Ben’s legs: “Help.”
Ben diverted the conversation to save his grandson. He extended his hand to the FBI agent and said, “Ben Brice. I’m Gracie’s grandfather.”
“Eugene Devereaux, FBI.”
He was a big man with big hands and a firm grip. The two men regarded each other.
“Ben Brice,” Agent Devereaux said. “That name sounds familiar. Have we met?”
Ben shook his head and diverted the conversation again. “Have you gotten a ransom call?”
“No, sir.” Agent Devereaux turned to Elizabeth. “What about Gracie’s underwear?”
“Kate,” Elizabeth said, “what underwear was Grace wearing?”
“She wears Under Armour to her games.”
“Under what?”
Agent Devereaux interrupted: “Under Armour. Sports underwear. All the kids wear them now ’cause the pros do. My daughter wears them under her basketball uniform.” To Kate: “Did Gracie wear compression shorts?”
“Yes. Blue ones. And a sleeveless tee shirt, blue.”
Agent Devereaux glanced down the gallery and called out: “Agent Jorgenson!” He motioned, and a female FBI agent walked up. He addressed her: “We have white Lotto soccer shoes, blue knee socks, shin guards, blue Under Armour shorts and sleeveless tee shirt, blue soccer shorts, a gold soccer jersey with ‘Tornadoes’ on the front and a number nine on the back.” Back to the others: “Anything else?”
“Her necklace,” Ben said, triggering a sharp look from Elizabeth.
“What necklace?” Agent Devereaux asked.
“Silver chain with a silver star.”
“Are you sure she was wearing it?”
“I’m sure.”
Kate confirmed with a knowing nod.
To the female agent, who was writing on a notepad, Agent Devereaux said, “And the necklace. Get the updated description to the media.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and then she departed.
Agent Devereaux gave Ben and Kate a polite nod and said, “Mr. Brice, Mrs. Brice,” then he and Elizabeth walked away down the gallery. Ben turned to Kate.
“Why are they asking about her”—a glance down at Sam—“clothes? I thought it was about ransom.”
She turned her hands up. “Until they get a call …”
Sam tugged at Ben’s legs. “Grandpa, what happened to Gracie? No one’ll tell me the truth.” He gestured up at Kate. “Not even Nanna.”
Ben squatted and came face-to-face with a miniature version of John—the same mop of curly black hair, the same dark eyes, the same black glasses, although his grandson’s glasses had no lenses; Gracie said Sam had taken to wearing the frames so he’d be like his father. Ben had sent his grandson birthday and Christmas gifts each year (hand-carved wooden coyotes and horses and a little rocking chair with SAM carved into the seat back) and had talked to him whenever Gracie had called; and Gracie had sent the photos of Sam that were stuck to the refrigerator in the cabin, so Ben felt as if he knew Sam, but he hadn’t seen the boy since his birth. Ben had never been welcome in his son’s home.
“She’s gone,” Ben said.
“Can I have her stuff?”
“What?”
“You know, like when she goes to college, I’m gonna get her room and all her stuff.”
“No, it’s not like that, Sam. She didn’t want to go.”
“So why did she?”
“A man took her.”
An innocent face. “The mailman?”
“No, not a nice man.”
“A cretin?”
“A what?”
“A bad man.”
“Yes, Sam, a bad man.”
“Where did she sleep last night?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did the cretin feed her dinner?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s ransom?”
“Money.”
“The cretin wants money to let Gracie go?”
“Maybe.”
Sam’s face brightened. “Well, that’s okay.”
“Why?”
“Because after the IPO, we’ll be a billionaire.”
9:17 A.M.
FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux had no doubt the furnishings in this one room cost more than his entire homestead. He had followed the victim’s mother into the elegant formal living room in the east wing of the residence; Devereaux didn’t know furnishings from fiddlesticks, but he k
new this stuff didn’t come cheap. He instinctively pushed his hands into his pockets, like he did when visiting those antique shops the wife loved, so as not to inadvertently break something he couldn’t afford.
“Set up in here,” the mother said. She dismissed the entire room with a wave of her hand. “Use the furniture, move it to the garage, burn it for firewood. I don’t give a damn.”
“Mrs. Brice, we normally don’t establish the command post in the victim’s home, but—”
She pointed a finger his way. “I want it here! I want to know what’s being done to find my daughter at all times! I’ll call Larry McCoy himself if I have to! He owes me!”
Not that it would affect his decision, but Devereaux couldn’t help but wonder if the mother really knew the president personally or was merely a “Friend of Larry,” a status earned through a $100,000 contribution to his last campaign.
—“but, your home is already wired for twenty phone and fax lines and broadband for computers and it would take us the entire morning to wire another location. So we will set up the command post here. We’ll be operational in one hour.”
Devereaux hoped he would not regret his decision. Because there was a good reason not to establish a command post in the victim’s home: if the victim was not recovered quickly, personnel couldn’t be maintained at a remote location indefinitely; the command post would have to be moved to the local FBI field office in downtown Dallas forty miles away. And when it was, the parents would worry that the FBI was quitting on their child. But Eugene Devereaux had never quit on an abducted child.
“Good. Now, what’s being done to find my daughter?”
A fair enough question. Devereaux removed his hands from his pockets and ticked the items off on his fingers.
“I’ve got twenty agents full time on the case, plus ten local police. Chief Ryan issued an Amber Alert immediately upon Gracie’s disappearance and broadcast an alert on NLETS, the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System. Every law enforcement agency in the country knows about Gracie now.
“We’ve input Gracie into the National Crime Information Center Missing Person File. As soon as we get her photo, we’ll input her into the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They’ll put her on their website, and she’ll go on the FBI website.
“We’ll print up fliers with Gracie’s photo and a composite sketch of the suspect for distribution throughout the area and to the media. Chief Ryan is coordinating the search at the park. An FBI Evidence Response Team is also at the crime scene. They’ll collect and preserve any evidence and conduct a forensic analysis of the abduction site.
“We’ve installed communications equipment to record and trap and trace all incoming calls. Our Rapid Start Team will set up the command post, the phone bank, computers, and faxes, and coordinate and track all leads on a computerized system— there’ll be thousands. We’re interviewing witnesses who were at the park last night, and we’re canvassing the neighborhood.”
Devereaux decided not to mention that they were compiling a list of known sex offenders residing in the locality.
“Mrs. Brice, we can get a psychologist in here.”
“For what purpose?”
“For you, your husband, your son. To help you through this.”
“I don’t want help. I want my daughter found.”
The mother turned away, paced off four steps, and whirled to face him; her arms were crossed, and her eyes were sizing him up.
“And what are your qualifications, Agent Devereaux, to find my daughter?”
Bluntness did not offend Eugene Devereaux.
“Well, ma’am, this ain’t my first rodeo.” He was met with a blank expression. “One hundred twenty-seven abductions, Mrs. Brice. Those are my qualifications.”
Her face deflated as she absorbed his words; her eyes fell.
“One hundred twenty-seven,” she whispered. “My God.” She lifted her eyes. “Children?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How many were ransom?”
He hesitated. “None.”
“Ben, what if this isn’t about money?” Kate asked.
She had taken Ben out to the pool house. She thought it would be better that way, Ben staying out here alone. Just in case he drank. And the nightmares returned. And he screamed, that tortured cry that had punctured her sleep so many nights.
“Take me to the park.”
Kate shook her head. “It’s a crime scene. No one can go out there until they search it.”
Bobby Joe Fannin spat a stream of brown tobacco juice.
“Settle down, boys.”
The dogs were straining at their leashes, ready to get it on, the girl’s scent fresh in their nostrils. Bobby Joe headed up the county’s canine search unit, a team of six bloodhounds he had raised from pups. Good job, good benefits, outside most of the time. Not as good as farming this land thirty years ago when his granddaddy still owned this land, but not bad. Except for finding dead people. Bobby Joe never liked that part of the job. Why did killers from the city always dump the bodies in the country?
On the radio: “Bobby Joe, come in.”
Bobby Joe pulled the radio off his belt and pushed the transmit button. “Yeah, Chief?”
He could barely make out Police Chief Ryan at the other end of the park; the search party was stretched out single file across the playing fields. Bobby Joe worked alone, just him and the dogs, which was another thing he liked about the job, not having to work with other people much. In his line of work, other people around just messed things up: the dogs could detect human scent, but they couldn’t distinguish between humans. Another human being around would throw them off the girl’s scent.
“Bobby Joe, we’re fixin’ to get going down here,” the chief said. “Go ahead and start your dogs. You find something, you call me. Don’t touch nothing, you hear me?”
To his radio: “I done this before, Paulie.”
Bobby Joe had grown up with Paul Ryan. They had hunted this land together as boys—deer, wild hogs, quail—and these very woods for rabbit, back when these woods covered five hundred acres. His granddaddy said this was one of the last native post oak forests left on the high plains of Texas. But that was then and this was now and only a hundred acres were left. And Bobby Joe was hunting these woods for a little girl.
He spat again.
“Let’s go, boys,” he said, giving the dogs a little whistle. They set off into the woods, the dogs’ leashes in Bobby Joe’s right hand and the girl’s red-and-blue plaid school uniform in his left.
“Get off the goddamn grass!”
The chief said to make the mother happy, so Police Officer Eddie Yates was chasing the crowd of reporters and cameramen off the Brice’s landscaped front lawn. They took one look at him—the angular twenty-three-year-old face, the sharp flattop, the dark sunglasses, the bulging biceps that had the sleeves of his uniform ready to bust at the seams—and moved to the sidewalk, bitching as they did.
One riot, one Ranger.
Except Eddie wasn’t a Texas Ranger. He was a patrol cop in a small suburban police department that didn’t even have a SWAT team—not that it needed one, seeing as how the biggest crime the Town of Post Oak had to offer was kids passing around a beer under the bleachers at the little league field on Saturday nights. Eddie usually spent his shift working the town’s speed trap out on the freeway, nabbing speeders while dreaming of being on a big city SWAT team, wearing a black paramilitary uniform, packing military style assault weapons, busting down doors to drug houses, beating up gangsters, and fighting the war on drugs. He would take the Dallas Police Academy’s entrance exam for the fourth time this summer.
Fight back, Johnny-boy!
Be a man!
Go on, run home to mommy, Little Johnny Brice, you fuckin’ crybaby!
All the taunts from all the bullies at all the Army bases came rushing back now. Little Johnny Brice hadn’t been man enough to protect his own daughter at a public park. Ju
st like he hadn’t been man enough back then to fight back against the bullies. When the colonel returned from deployment, Mom would beg him to stop the beatings and the colonel would order the bullies’ fathers to instill discipline in their ranks. But that had only made the beatings worse. He remembered the beatings and his face stung; but from Elizabeth’s hand today and the hurt would not go away.
Back then, he had gone inside himself, deep into his inner child while his outer child was getting the crap beat out of it. Afterward, he had run home to his room. Mom would always come in and hold him while he cried, and she would cry too; she would doctor his wounds and tell him it would never happen again. But it always happened again. Other kids had spent their childhood outside, learning to hit a curve ball; John had spent his in his room, hiding from bullies and teaching himself computer code.
Now, he had sought refuge in his home office, secluded on the backside of the house; he was hiding from his spouse and trying to escape the fear and loathing of the real world, as he often did. But there would be no escape this time. Fear and loathing had followed Little Johnny Brice home.
The phone rang. He let the machine take the call. It was Lou in New York, leaving another message: “John, did you get my earlier messages? Jesus Christ, it’s on the news up here. I’m stunned! I don’t know what to say, buddy. How could something like that happen in a public park? Man, I’m like … shit. Call me.” The machine beeped and went silent.
Because I wasn’t man enough to protect her, that’s how it happened!
A Cray supercomputer occupied the space inside John’s skull; his mind was capable of complex calculations and came with a near photographic memory—but he couldn’t remember yesterday.
Was the game just yesterday?
Elbows resting on the desk, hands gripping his head, eyes closed, John tried to reboot his memory: he’s sitting in the stands at the soccer field, talking to Lou about the IPO; Elizabeth has gone to the concession stand to find Gracie; then a piercing scream startles him so—Grace! He drops the phone and runs to the concession stand where parents are shouting for their children and panic is racing through the crowd like an e-mail virus until the panic and he reach Elizabeth simultaneously.
