Captors

by Farris, John

  Now Sam turned out a weekly polemic for another magazine; he could take on as many speaking engagements as he liked. But losing the magazine had inevitably meant a loss of prestige. Carol was sure Sam's pride had taken a beating. Perhaps the marriage was now suffering, laggardly, because of this unreconciled failure.

  Obviously none of the usual factors could be blamed for the divorce: Sam hadn't taken to booze, or beating up his wife, or indiscriminate adultery. As far as Carol knew, nothing unforgivable had been said, or done. Now that she was somewhat better informed she had the confidence that they could be helped, with patience and tact. She beamed at her brother.

  "Thanks, Kevin."

  He looked at her uncomprehendingly.

  "You gave me a good idea of where the trouble is."

  "I did?"

  "Neither of them wants a divorce. I should be able to make them see it."

  Kevin shook his head doubtfully. "What can you do?"

  "Well—I'm not sure. I want to have a hard-nose talk with Sam when he gets home. Maybe if he and Felice—"

  "Miss?"

  Carol looked up, distracted. A man of about thirty was standing at her elbow. He was tall, bushy-haired, well-dressed—in the heat of summer he was wearing a vest. He was also wearing wraparound sunglasses with bulbous lenses. His face was long and lugubrious; there was a slight pout to his thick lips. He seemed embarrassed about something.

  "Yes?"

  His voice was annoyingly soft; it was difficult for her to understand him. "I don't like to interrupt you, but—that's your blue Sting Ray parked outside?"

  "Behind the building? Yes."

  "There was a fire under the hood; some wiring, I think."

  "Oh, my God!" Carol said.

  "It wasn't serious, though," he continued, placatingly. "I noticed the smoke when I drove up and thought I'd better lift the hood. Which I did. I had a foam extinguisher handy—carry it in my truck. Foam is the best thing for electrical fires. So the fire's out, and probably there's not much damage if you want to have a look—"

  Carol was already out of her seat. Kevin hadn't overheard everything, but he knew something was wrong with the Corvette. "Want me to come?" he asked quickly.

  "No. I'll be right back. Stay and finish your sandwich." The man had already walked away. Carol waited for a glue-footed waitress to unblock the aisle, then caught up with the man outside.

  "What could have happened?" Carol moaned. "I've only had my car three weeks."

  "Well, as I said, it doesn't look bad. Insurance will take care of what damage there is." He had a slow-paced drawl which was familiar to Carol. He was from the Southwest, she decided. Arizona or New Mexico.

  "I'm grateful that you noticed something was wrong."

  "Couldn't help admiring your fine automobile."

  "How did you know the Corvette belonged to me?" Carol asked. "We've been in the restaurant for—"

  She bolted ahead of the man. The hood of the cornflower-blue Sting Ray was raised. Carol stepped under the restaurant roof, looked down at the carburetor housing and engine block of her beloved car, dreading a blackened and foam-splattered mess.

  There was an all-but-invisible film of road dust, but otherwise everything looked new and undamaged.

  Carol lifted her head indignantly, saw the bushy-haired man standing to her right, his face expressionless but sweaty. Immediately behind them, parked between the Sting Ray and the service door of the steak house, was a black Volkswagen van. Carol had a glimpse of the dark-skinned youth behind the wheel, his face turned toward them, something anxious and predatory in that face, eyes lost behind aviator sunglasses. But she knew him, Carol was sure of it, and she was struck by the oddity of seeing him here, of all the unlikely— She started to speak, but an instinctive surge of panic closed her throat.

  The other man was holding something; it looked like a white can of shaving cream, the nozzle pointed toward her.

  "What—" Carol said, her voice breaking, an instant before the bushy-haired man pressed the button on the can and sprayed her in the face with something that felt very much like liquid fire.

  "Would you like something else?"

  Kevin glanced at the waitress. In the top of the fourth the Mets had tied the score at three and were threatening again, with runners on second and third and one out. His eyes shifted to the uneaten sandwich on Carol's plate, then to the small lobby of the steakhouse, where a lot of people were waiting for tables. He didn't see Carol. She'd been gone for more than ten minutes. He smiled at the waitress, who looked tired. "May I have another glass of milk?" he said.

  "You certainly may." Like women of all ages, she was instantly susceptible to his smile, when he felt like really turning it on.

  The next batter struck out, to Kevin's disgust. Hodges sent up a pinch hitter, who went for a bad first pitch and fouled out to the third baseman, ending the rally. Kevin wished Carol would come on. He put the radio down beside his plate, leaving it so they wouldn't think he was trying to run out on the check, and went outside.

  It was a little past five but still very hot. A two-car Penn Central train was pulling away from the unabashedly quaint red frame station near Jake's. Kevin expected to find Carol by the Sting Ray; the hood had been raised. But she wasn't there. Neither was the bushy-haired man with whom she had left the restaurant.

  From where he was standing Kevin could see the Esso station; she wasn't over there, either. Kevin looked carefully around the parking lot, separated from the railroad tracks by a six-foot stockade fence. Carol wasn't sitting in any of the other cars. He watched as the train receded in the distance, bound for the city. He didn't know what to think, but he was beginning to get mad at his sister. He didn't buy the idea of Carol going off with the bushy-haired man, but she had undoubtedly gone someplace—without bothering to tell him.

  She must have had a good reason. Probably there was something wrong with the car which couldn't be fixed at the Esso, especially if there wasn't a mechanic on duty. It was a safe bet that on Sunday there wasn't. So the bushy-haired man had driven her to a garage he knew about. There was no more to it than that, Kevin decided.

  He approached the Sting Ray to see for himself what the trouble was. Nothing looked wrong to his inexperienced eye. But there was a white envelope wedged behind the fan belt, where it would have to be seen by anyone attempting to lower the hood.

  Kevin freed the envelope, stared at it. There was a strip of tape from a label maker pasted across the front, raised white letters on red tape. It wasn't addressed to anyone in particular.

  It simply said, whimsically, OPEN ME.

  Chapter Two

  Sunday, June 23

  Instead of driving on to the carriage-house garage, Sam Holland left his Mercedes in the drive directly in front of the three-story Colonial house. He grabbed his two-suiter from the right side of the seat and went quickly up the steps to the long front porch, almost jogging, and let himself into the house. The center hall was brightly lighted, but only a single lamp burned in the living room to his left, and no one was there.

  "Felice!" Sam called.

  A man came promptly from the kitchen at the rear of the house, walked down the hall toward him. He was of middle height and wore a faded, wrinkled wash-and-wear jacket, a badly knotted tie. His hair was going and his complexion was bumpy and mottled. But he had dark, lustrous, inquisitive eyes and the stride of a fencing master, or a gymnast.

  "Mr. Holland?"

  "Who are you?" Sam asked, but he had seen enough of the breed to know.

  "Fox Village Police," the man replied perfunctorily, showing him identification in a shabby folder. He was a detective lieutenant. "My name is Peter Demilia."

  Sam put his suitcase against one wall. "Are you in charge?"

  "More or less. Chief Demkus called in the FBI. Special Agent in Charge Gaffney is supervising. Why don't you talk to him?"

  "Has there been any word?"

  "I'm afraid not," Demilia said. "Your wife is in the k
itchen, Mr. Holland—" But Felice Holland had appeared in the doorway at the opposite end of the hall.

  "Sam," she said, sounding weak and glad. They met halfway, wordlessly. Sam held her very tightly, absorbing a tremor which she had probably suppressed for most of the evening.

  "What's being done?" Sam asked quietly.

  "I don't know—not very much. I don't think there's much anyone can do. It's been nine hours, Sam!"

  "I'd better see this Gaffney."

  He kept an arm around his wife as they went into the kitchen; Demilia followed. Two men were standing by the massive round captain's table at one end of the thirty-foot-long kitchen. One of the men was on the short side, in his late forties perhaps, squint-eyed and astute, with a stippled pugnaciously handsome face, deeply lined around the mouth, a face that looked as if it had been chiseled out of sandstone. His hair was grizzle gray at the ears, flame red on top. It was a hot night; he had taken off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves and was drinking iced coffee. Sam was impressed by the width of the man's wrists, the leather-hard look of his sun-reddened forearms.

  The other man was Felice's father, General Henry Phelan Morse, U.S.A. Ret., a slouched, crippled giant of sixty-eight whose face had become mostly creases and pouches, with slitted hangdog eyes and a nose engorged by time and love of Southern Comfort. He wore a youthful-looking hairpiece most of the time and, strangely enough, what might have made him seem ridiculous worked for him instead. In spite of his years and only a leg and a half to stand on, the General retained a surprising amount of the virility and steel-clad authority that had characterized his life and career; beside him Special Agent Gaffney, who evidently was quite a man in his own right, seemed diminished to the status of a subaltern.

  The FBI man put down his glass of coffee at Sam's approach and introduced himself. "Robert Gaffney, Mr. Holland." Sam shook hands with him and then with the General, who as usual gripped his hand as if he was trying to pull a stump out of the ground.

  "Sorry to drag you away from your speechmaking, Sam." To Sam the implication was that nobody really needed him, so why should he have come at all?

  "I think you should have let me know sooner," Sam replied curtly, barely glancing at the General.

  "It's difficult to get a flight from Pittsburgh on Sunday night." To Gaffney he said, "How many of you are working on the investigation?"

  "There are eight of my men. Claude Demkus has assigned most of his detectives." Demkus was chief of the Fox Village police, a highly mobile and efficient force in a rich semirural community.

  "All of you parading in and out of this house? If the kidnappers are watching, Carol may be dead by now." Sam saw the look of sick terror in Felice's eyes and wished he hadn't said that, but he'd had a long, agonizing trip back and he had obeyed a rash desire to assert himself in some way.

  "If anyone was watching the house, Mr. Holland, we'd know about it. But as a matter of routine, Lieutenant Demilia and I came in by way of the General's house next door. We'll take the same precaution when either of us leaves. The investigation is being coordinated from Chief Demkus's office."

  "I'm sorry," Sam said. "I shouldn't have assumed—Could you tell me about it now? The agent in Pittsburgh didn't have much to say."

  "Sam, hot coffee?" Felice asked.

  "Yes, please. Why don't we all sit down?" Demilia had quietly left the kitchen. The General, of course, preferred to remain standing, although he was far from comfortable that way. He stood with his back against a brick wall, glass in hand. Drinking it straight, one chunk of ice. How about you? Sam thought, with an unquenchable flash of resentment. Are you scared, General? But instead of frightened he looked stimulated, enlivened by events, perhaps a shade regretful that he wasn't running the show.

  Felice brought coffee and slipped into the chair beside Sam. She glanced at him apologetically. "Sam, would you mind? A cigarette?" Sam looked blankly at her, then remembered she had given up smoking a few days ago, for what seemed like the fiftieth time since they had been married. All those Cancer Society commercials on television had prompted her most recent attempt.

  Sam lit filtertips for both of them, handed one to Felice. She took it gratefully and dragged deeply once, then closed her eyes like a child too starved to eat. "The kids played tennis most of the afternoon," she said, as if it steadied her to do the talking. "They went down to the Village about four-thirty for hamburgers. Asked if I wanted to go along, but I had my hair to wash." Felice opened her eyes and stared unfocusedly at the cigarette in her hand. The other hand was clenched; Above Sam's head ice rattled in the General's glass as he sipped his whiskey.

  "Where did they go? To Jake's?"

  "Yes. They had to wait a little while for a table, and then they ordered, but Carol apparently wasn't hungry, she didn't touch her sandwich when it came. They talked quite a bit, Kevin said. About us."

  "About us?" Sam repeated, and Gaffney, catching something in his tone, flicked his eyes across Sam's face.

  "And then a man came in and told Carol something had happened to her car. He talked in a low voice and Kevin couldn't overhear all he said. It was something about an electrical fire under the hood of the Corvette, Kevin thinks. Carol went outside with the man—followed him outside. And after ten minutes or so, when she didn't come back, Kevin went to look for her. Carol was gone, and so was the man. The Corvette hadn't been damaged in any way. Kevin found a note under the raised hood."

  "A ransom note?" Sam said, and Gaffney reached into an inside pocket of his coat, which was folded over the chair next to him. He handed Sam a sheet of paper.

  "This is a typed facsimile," the agent explained. "We'll put the original through our lab to see if anything useful turns up. The original message was printed by a common type of a label maker, raised white letters on strips of quarter-inch red tape. These were gummed to a sheet of heavy white typing paper."

  Sam read the brief message twice.

  WE HAVE CAROL WATFERSON NO POLICE NO FBI

  SHE WILL BE KILLED IF YOU DONT DO AS WE SAY

  GET 225 G USED BILLS

  FIFFIES TWENTIES

  YOU WILL HEAR FROM US

  He let the paper fall to the table, his face taut with apprehension. "It's been a while since I've heard of a kidnapping for ransom."

  Gaffney nodded. "Kidnapping goes through cycles of popularity. There are certain types of crimes which publicity seems to breed: kidnapping, mass shootings, political assassination. Quite often such crimes are the work of nonprofessionals, individuals whose previous criminal records, if any, are of minor offenses."

  "Then the threat to kill her—"

  "I don't want to mislead you. At this point we can't accept that as a bluff."

  "Please, please," Felice murmured, her head bowed.

  Sam said, "The note refers to we. Does that mean more than one man is involved?"

  "It seems likely. But we don't know if Carol was taken by force."

  "How else could she have been taken?" Felice asked, exasperated. Sam looked at his wife. He could all but see the bones of her face showing through her skin. She'd already endured nine hours of this. He knew it was useless to try to get her to bed, so he held one of her hands tightly, giving what comfort he could. He was beginning to find that concentration came hard. He drank some of the steaming coffee, forcing it down, wincing. But coffee helped.

  "Was Kevin able to give a good description of the man who came into the restaurant?"

  "He remembered the man as tall, thin, bushy-haired. A reddish cast to his hair. Kevin couldn't say how old he was. The man wore dark glasses which covered a third of his face."

  "What else do you have to go on?"

  "Frankly, Mr. Holland, we have very little. We're hoping that someone who was in the vicinity of the steakhouse around five o'clock saw the two of them get into a car. The restaurant was full at that hour, and a gas station across the way was open. But, as of this moment—" Gaffney didn't quite shrug, which would have been unprofessional of h
im. Instead he reached for his glass of iced coffee. "We can draw some tentative conclusions about the kidnapping from what we already know, and there are certain areas of speculation which might prove to be fruitful."

  A bumping and scratching at the screen of the back door froze them all.

  Even as Gaffney glanced toward the door he dropped his hand to the butt of the revolver he wore in a belt holster. Sam turned his head and saw Riggs, Kevin's setter pup, with his nose pressed against the screen, a paw raised to scratch again.

  "Oh, Lord!" Felice said. "We forgot to feed him. Poor Riggs." She got up immediately and opened a pantry door, took out a package of Gaines-burgers and went to the back porch. "Good boy, Riggs," she said soothingly, breaking open the package. "We're sorry—here's your supper."

  Sam said to the FBI man, "What conclusions?"

  "The amount of money specified in the note is two hundred twenty-five thousand. Your wife has already told me that you would have trouble raising that kind of money, particularly on short notice."

  Sam nodded. "We'd have to mortgage the house to make it, or sell a dozen paintings in a hurry."

  "So the kidnappers obviously were aiming at me," General Morse said harshly. "It has to be someone who knows I can pick up a telephone and order five times that amount, in cash, no questions asked."

  "Someone in your organization?" Gaffney asked politely.

  "I have employees and agents all over the world, of course, but they're clerks and purchasing agents and salesmen, that's all. Most of them wouldn't know me if they saw me."