Scared Stiff

by Willo Davis Roberts

  The laughter, though, wasn’t part of the stuff programmed to scare the customers. Connie was here somewhere. I’d know that fake laugh anywhere. It had sure scared me the first time I heard it.

  I didn’t know whether to stay on my ledge or get back in the water and return to the mouth of the cave. Once Packard was outside, if they didn’t yell, I might not know what they were saying, and I decided I needed to hear them. So I slid into the water again. I was already wet, and this time it didn’t feel quite so cold.

  I got to the entrance about the same time Packard came out the exit ten yards away.

  “There has to be another way out of here,” he declared angrily as his gondola bumped the dock. “The kid got away somehow.”

  I held my breath. Would they leave if they thought that?

  Without warning, every light in the park went out and all the music stopped.

  I knew it had to be Connie or Julie who’d thrown the switch, but what for? Grown men wouldn’t be scared of the dark, would they? They might be confused, but it wasn’t really dark enough to frighten an adult.

  The voice that came over a loudspeaker was familiar, but it had a ring of authority that was new.

  “This is the police. You are surrounded. Surrender your hostages and come out with your hands up. Walk to the center of the park, near the carousel. I repeat, with your hands up. You have three minutes. I repeat, you are surrounded by armed police officers.”

  For a moment there was no reaction from the two men. Then Zimmer shoved Kenny to one side and started up the steps from the dock. “I’m getting out of here. I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t care anymore. I’m leaving.”

  “That’s not the cops,” Packard snarled. “It’s those kids, they’ve got hold of a microphone somewhere!”

  “I don’t care who it is. I’ve had it,” Zimmer said, and then he was gone.

  Packard hadn’t given up yet. I heard Kenny give a protesting cry when Packard grabbed his arm and dragged him away from the entrance to the Pirate’s Cave. By then no one was paying any attention to where I was. Packard didn’t even look back when I followed him up and out onto the grounds.

  The man was walking fast, dragging Kenny, but he wasn’t running. I couldn’t let him take Kenny, I thought, and I did run, though I was afraid he’d hear me, even on the grass.

  Packard was sticking to the path, heading toward the place he’d come into the park after us. I didn’t watch where I was going, and I tripped over one of the good-sized rocks that outlined the pathway.

  I don’t even remember thinking about it. I bent, picked up one of the stones, about the size of the one I’d thrown through the window of the castle-office, and hurled it.

  Pa and I used to play catch in the park, and he said I had a pretty good arm for a skinny kid. I put everything I had behind it.

  The rock hit Packard in the back.

  I heard the air go out of him, and he let go of Kenny and started to turn around.

  “Run, Kenny!” I yelled, but it was already too late. Packard had already grabbed him again.

  I found another rock, but my aim wasn’t quite as good this time—it was different with the man facing me, and so close—but it clipped his cheek and he jerked.

  And then the lights came on again, though there was no music, and this time the voice that spoke didn’t sound like Connie’s version of the The Insane Dr. Murder.

  “This is the police. Put your hands up and stand where you are.”

  For a minute I thought he was going to obey. Kenny pulled against him, and then Packard made up his mind. He jerked Kenny right off his feet, so Kenny yelped before he got scooped up and half carried, half dragged along with Packard.

  I just stood there, watching them disappear beyond the Wild West Village Saloon, feeling helpless.

  The police were really there, though. That wasn’t Connie repeating orders over a bullhorn, it was real cops. I ran toward the hole in the fence, hoping that Packard wouldn’t find the way out through the drainpipe. The cops would catch him and make him give up Kenny, wouldn’t they?

  Connie said later he was real disappointed that the cops didn’t use sirens, but of course they were coming because of what Uncle Henry had told them, not because they knew what was happening to us.

  The movable boards had been torn out of the fence by the time I got there, making more room for bigger people to go through, and there was a crowd on the other side.

  The purple bus was back, not in Uncle Henry’s space but parked in the middle of the road behind the black sedan so it was pinned in. Everybody who lived in Wonderland RV Park was there, including Mrs. Giuliani’s dog, who wouldn’t stop barking.

  “I saw that man banging the boy against the fence,” Mrs. Giuliani was telling someone, probably for the tenth time, “and I called the police.”

  It turned out practically everybody had called them. Uncle Henry had convinced them we had some genuine evidence that Ma had been kidnapped. Mrs. Biggers called them when the men returned after she’d told them she wouldn’t allow them to take Kenny and me, no matter what their note said. Mr. Alvinhorst had used the pay phone to call when he heard music and then saw lights inside of Wonderland.

  I practically fell out into the midst of all those people. Uncle Henry pushed through them to reach me, and I gasped out that Packard still had Kenny.

  There was only one police car, and the officer had already put handcuffs on Zimmer, who glowered at me through the back window.

  Uncle Henry called to the officer. “The other one still has the younger boy!”

  “We’ve got more officers on the way,” the cop said, and right then we heard them coming. Code three, with sirens. “Is there another way out of the amusement park, son?”

  Connie and I both told him at once about the drainpipe. “It would be a tight squeeze for a grown man, though,” Connie added.

  Three more cars filled up the driveway behind the first patrol car, and more police officers jumped out. They all had a consultation, and in just a few seconds they were spreading out to surround Wonderland. I heard one of them say, “He’s got a hostage,” and I felt sickish. His hostage was Kenny.

  A pair of plainclothes officers arrived right behind the patrol cars and started asking questions. One of them sat in the car with Zimmer and talked through that mesh between the seats. The other one talked to Connie and Julie and me. Uncle Henry stood with his hand on my shoulder, and he sounded angry when he finally spoke.

  “We’ve been trying for several days to make somebody believe Sophie had been kidnapped. From what the boys say, it sounds like Sophie found out something—”

  “They mentioned a tape,” I put in, “that Ma swiped before it could be erased. We didn’t find anything like that.”

  The officer, who had introduced himself as Sergeant Patterson, considered that, then stepped over to the car where his partner was talking to a sullen-looking Zimmer.

  That officer nodded at the sergeant. “I think this one’s going to be cooperative. I read him his rights, and he’s asked for a lawyer, but he’s already admitted they kidnapped Mrs. Van Huler.”

  “Where is she?” I demanded. “Where’s my ma? Is she all right?”

  Zimmer just scowled at me, but he’d been talking, all right.

  “They left her locked up in a warehouse. A patrol car has been dispatched out there; we’ll be hearing from them shortly.”

  “What’s this about a tape that’s missing?” Sergeant Patterson asked.

  Zimmer scowled at him too. “I’m waiting for my lawyer,” he said.

  “Fine. He’ll meet you down at the jail, after we’ve booked you,” the officer said stolidly. “I can make an educated guess, though. Lot of those trucking places record their incoming phone calls, when people make arrangements to have things shipped. Just to keep it all straight until the dispatcher can get it written down on a board.”

  I remembered then. “Yeah! They have a big white board behind the desk, with
every driver’s name written on it, and where they’re going. Sometimes Ma helps write that stuff in, if Cranston’s busy. I saw her, once.”

  The cop nodded. “That it, Zimmer? Something on the tape made Mrs. Van Huler suspicious?”

  Zimmer just grunted and didn’t answer.

  Actually, we didn’t have to wait too long to find out about that. We could hear the cops talking on the bullhorns inside Wonderland, and it was pretty clear they hadn’t found Packard and Kenny yet.

  They did find Ma, though. When his radio squawked, Sergeant Patterson went back to his car to answer it and came back to let us know. “Your mom’s okay. She’s worried about you kids, and they’re going to bring her over here. They’re only a few miles away; it won’t take them long.”

  I hoped real hard that they’d have Kenny back, and safe, before Ma got there, but they didn’t.

  When Ma got out of the police car and ran toward us, I hugged her, and she almost broke my ribs hugging back. “Where’s Kenny?” she asked.

  Ma was tired and dirty and there was a dark bruise on her cheek. She looked anxiously past me at the sergeant. “You haven’t got Kenny yet?”

  “The man named Packard is holding him hostage,” I told her, and it was all I could do not to cry.

  Sergeant Patterson spoke quietly while another officer started trying to get all the people to move back away from the hole in the fence. “We’ll get your son back, Mrs. Van Huler. Packard is trapped in there; he can’t get away, and he has nothing to gain by hurting the boy now. Why don’t you and Rick go sit in my car while we take care of this?”

  “I guess I do need to sit down again,” Ma said, putting an arm around me.

  Julie and Connie came with us, too, when I asked them. So we sat in the unmarked car—I could tell by Connie’s eyes as he looked it over that he was planning what he’d say to his friends about all this—and Ma told us what had been happening to her.

  I heard everything she said, but the whole time I kept watching the opening in the fence, crossing my fingers that Kenny would come safely through it.

  Chapter Eighteen

  We sat in Sergeant Patterson’s car, and Ma was so nervous about Kenny and Packard that she had a hard time telling us what had been happening. I guess she wouldn’t have said anything if we hadn’t kept asking questions.

  “He’s a terrible man,” she said, shivering. “He pretends to be friendly and pleasant, but he doesn’t care who he cheats . . . or hurts.”

  I looked at the bruise on her cheek. “Did he do that?” I asked, sounding croaky.

  Ma glanced into the rearview mirror and touched the discolored place. “Zimmer shoved me into that storage room where they put me after I got away and tried to call you. I fell and hit something hard.”

  Connie had just met her, but he wasn’t bashful. “How come you didn’t just call the cops instead of trying to call Mr. Svoboda?”

  Ma never took her eyes off the police officer standing at the corner of the laundry building, where he could watch the hole in the fence. “I should have, I guess. But I had to know if the boys were safe; Zimmer said they were going to hurt Rick and Kenny. . . .” Tears welled up in her eyes. “I was afraid if I called the police and he had the kids—”

  She broke off, and we all knew what she’d been afraid of. And we were still afraid for Kenny, even though we didn’t see how Packard could get him out of the amusement park with all the cops around.

  “And then they came after you, in the phone booth,” I prompted, “before you could call the cops. And locked you up in a different place. We almost found you, Ma, at that wrecking yard.”

  She reached over and squeezed my hand, giving me a watery smile. I decided not to ask what Zimmer and Packard had threatened to do to Kenny and me. Maybe I’d be better off not knowing for sure.

  “So what’s it all about?” Connie wanted to know. And, still watching the police officers in case anything developed about rescuing Kenny, Ma started to explain.

  She was sorry she’d doubted Pa’s innocence in the hijacking even for a minute. She worried they might fire him, and she kept trying to figure things out.

  About a week after Pa left, she read in the paper about another hijacking, a load belonging to Ajax Tires being hauled by Costa Trucking, which was only a few blocks from E & F. It sounded a lot like what had happened to Pa.

  The week after that, she heard that Baylord Electronics, who often shipped with E & F, had lost a load of very expensive computer components, while they were being hauled to California by JV Trucking.

  It seemed kind of a coincidence at first, because J V Trucking was right across the road from E & F. The secretaries and bookkeepers for all three trucking companies often had lunch together at Josie’s Place, a little café that was the only eating place within walking distance of where they worked.

  The next time they got together, they talked about the hijackings, and how upsetting it was both to the truckers who did the hauling and to the owners of the cargo. And Ma learned that all three trucking firms were insured by the same insurance company, the one Packard worked for as an adjuster.

  At first she didn’t think so much of that, but she kept worrying about Pa and what would happen to him if he had another load stolen. He could lose his job, and if anybody thought he had anything to do with the hijackings he might not be able to find another one.

  Then while she was doing her bookkeeping she noticed the names of all the companies that had lost loads and got to thinking about the fact that every time a hijacking had happened the trucks had been loaded with the most valuable stuff. And Ma wondered how the hijackers had known just which loads would be the easiest ones to sell to unscrupulous buyers for the biggest profits.

  On impulse she copied the pages out of her ledgers with the lists of shippers’ names to take home and study and think about. She didn’t want to go to either Mr. Edward or Mr. Frank, because right then she even suspected they might be defrauding their own insurance company. She didn’t trust anybody. But she decided to do some research and see if she could figure out any kind of pattern to the hijackings.

  She stuck the copies with her purse to take home, thinking that maybe she’d talk to the secretaries and bookkeepers at the other companies and see if there had been hijackings she hadn’t heard about. She was trying to think who could possibly know, from at least three different trucking companies, about those valuable loads and where it would be feasible to hijack them.

  And then, because the office was busy and the dispatcher, Cranston, was having some kind of meeting with Mr. Edward and Mr. Frank in one of their offices, Ma did something she almost never did.

  She answered the phone that usually only Cranston answered, took an order to haul a load of fertilizer to Illinois, and noticed when she’d finished that there wasn’t much space left on the tape that recorded such calls.

  “I decided to do Cranston a favor,” she told us, “and check the tape to make sure everything that had been recorded was written up on the board, including the one I’d just contracted for. I didn’t know which driver Cranston would give that load to, but he could fill that part in later, and I put a new tape on the machine for the next calls.”

  Ordinarily, Cranston would have been the only one who’d ever have heard any of those tapes. But when Ma rewound the tape and started listening to it on the little tape player the dispatcher kept for that purpose, practically the first thing she heard was a conversation that made her suspect that Cranston was involved in an inside job.

  “He took the order from an electronics company, and I knew that load would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. There wasn’t anything suspicious about that, we haul that kind of stuff all the time,” she told us, never taking her eyes off the cop watching the fence, in case Kenny came through it. “But right after that call, Cranston made one of his own. Didn’t call anybody by name, didn’t identify himself. He just said ‘Tri Cities Electronics. I’ll give it to Baker; he always stops at Mont
e’s Truck Stop. He should be there tomorrow night, about nine.’ ” That was all, but I felt like somebody’d kicked me in the stomach. There was no reason, no legitimate reason, why Cranston should have passed that information on to anyone else. And though the man he’d called had only spoken a few words when he picked up the phone, I had a feeling the voice was one I’d heard, only I couldn’t remember who it was.”

  Ma squeezed my hand hard, as if it made her feel better to hang on to somebody, and kept on talking.

  “I rewound the tape to the beginning, thinking maybe I’d better pretend I hadn’t listened to it, but before I was quite finished getting it off the machine, Cranston came back.”

  He hadn’t paid any attention to her, but Ma was afraid to take the tape out of the tape player for fear he’d see it and realize she’d listened to it.

  “At first I thought I’d put it in the basket where he keeps the used tapes until he reuses them,” Ma said, “but in the meantime I didn’t dare touch it. And then he went outside to the shop for a few minutes, and I decided to stick the tape in my purse and take it home and listen to the whole thing. I was positive by then that Cranston was telling somebody about the loads to hijack, and I didn’t know if there was anybody I could trust; but I was going to ask your pa about it when he came in from that trip.”

  Connie’d kept still for a long time. Now he leaned over the back of the front seat. “Only they figured out you were onto them.”

  “Yes. Cranston realized the tape on the phone had been changed, and that I was the only one who could have done it. If I’d dropped it in the basket the way I should have, he’d probably have thought I hadn’t listened to it. Anyway, I got on the bus and went home, and I thought I’d gotten away with it until those thugs caught up with me.”

  “Zimmer and Packard,” Julie said. “They’re scary.”

  “They sure are,” Ma agreed. “When I got off the bus near home and they drove up alongside of me, they scared me half to death. I didn’t know Zimmer, but Packard is in and out of the office all the time with various kinds of business. The minute he spoke to me, I knew he was the one Cranston had called with that information about a shipment. When I saw the boys coming, all I could think of was to get them away from me, because I didn’t want them mixed up in whatever Packard intended to do.”