Miscue

by Glen C. Allison

  She mumbled something and turned over on her side. He poked her again.

  “Go away,” she croaked.

  “Breakfast is served,” Schein said. He turned and walked out into the sunshine where the van was parked next to the old shack.

  He opened the side door of the van and spread the food out on the built-in counter top beneath the wall-mounted monitors. He opened the lid of his coffee and drank.

  Hallee climbed through the door and sat on a stool at the counter. Her hair was stuck out at a 90-degree angle from her head on the left side. She sat and looked at the food for a moment before reaching for the orange juice.

  Schein put out a hand. “Shall we say grace?”

  The girl blinked and stared at him.

  He bowed his head. “Dear Lord, thank you for this food and all your blessings to us. Amen.” He looked over at Hallee. “You didn’t say grace at your house?” Inside he winced. He didn’t mean to ask the question in the past tense, as if those days were over. Then again, he thought, in some ways they were gone. Forever.

  Hallee popped the plastic lid off the orange juice and took two big swallows. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, then looked at him again. Schein could see pain in her eyes.

  “Did you kill my dad?” she asked. Her eyes were filled with tears.

  Schein held a piece of scrambled egg on his fork halfway between the Styrofoam plate and his mouth. He put it down.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Hallee let out an involuntary gasping sob. “Why?”

  Schein looked away from the girl. He felt sadness for her, not because of what he had done to her father but because she was forcing him to tell her some hard truth at such a young age.

  “Do you know what your father did? For a living?” he asked.

  She sniffed. “He was a doctor.”

  “Hallee, you know what he did. As a doctor.”

  “He performed abortions.”

  “And you understand what that means?”

  “Yes, he helped women who didn’t need children in their lives …”

  Schein interrupted. “Hallee, do you hear yourself? You said it. Children. They were children.”

  “But they weren’t born yet…”

  “They never had a chance to be born.”

  Hallee was silent. She reached for a napkin and blew her nose.

  “But the women,” she said, her voice low, “they chose to do it, not my father.”

  Schein had heard it before. He felt sorry for the girl. She had believed a lie so young.

  “He helped them kill their children, Hallee. It’s hard to hear but it is true. I had to stop him.”

  She looked at him now, her eyes a mixture of pain and anger in the dim light of the van.

  “Then you are no better than you say he was. You murdered him.”

  “I saved children’s lives.”

  She sniffed again but her tears were gone now. “You had no right.”

  Schein was quiet now. He picked up his fork and ate another bite of the eggs. He would not debate the girl about the issue. After all, her father was dead. He tossed the plastic fork into the disposable tray and snapped shut the tray lid. He was suddenly not hungry. He picked up both of their trays and motioned for her to follow him.

  “You can eat outside somewhere. I need to shut the doors to the van,” he said.

  She took her food and sat under a tree close to the shack.

  Schein stepped inside and found the masking tape, old newspapers, buckets of paint and primer, and the paint sprayer. He set everything on the ground next to the van, then went back inside the shed and brought out a gasoline-operated generator. He yanked the cord to start the generator. It took two pulls but it started up. The sound of the generator was loud in the woods. Schein welcomed the noise.

  He shut it off and picked up the tape. He carefully taped the windows, bumpers, door handles, grillwork and chrome mirrors on the old van. Every minute or so, he glanced over at the tree where Hallee sat sipping on her juice with her head against the tree trunk.

  As he walked around the end of the van to tape the fixtures on the other side, he caught a movement from the corner of his eye. Hallee had waited until she thought he was out of sight before jumping up and running through the woods.

  Schein walked back around the van and set the tape down. He watched her run for a moment. Then he trotted after her.

  With the sunshine playing through the new spring leaves, the morning revived his spirits as he jogged along. The girl had sprinted out to a quarter mile distance but he knew that they were miles away from any house. She would soon tire.

  Slowly he gained on her. A hundred yards away, then fifty, then ten. He could hear her gasping for breath. Before he could reach her, she stumbled and fell to the leafy carpet in the woods. He stood over her, breathing easily.

  Hallee’s breath was coming in great gulps as she lay there. She put up a hand as if to fend him off.

  Schein stopped and leaned against a tree, his breathing faster but still steady. The day would be humid, he could tell. He wiped a trickle of sweat off his forehead.

  “No,” Hallee rasped. “I don’t want to go.”

  “You have to,” said Schein.

  Hallee sat up. Her breath came a little easier now.

  Her face was twisted in fear. “Are you going to kill me too?”

  Schein looked at her. If she only knew…

  “No,” he said. “You will be fine if everything comes together like it should.”

  He held out a hand to help the girl up. She looked at his hand then stood up without taking it.

  He shrugged. “Back to the van,” he said. “If you try that again, I will tie you up and gag you again.”

  Hallee said nothing. Her face was streaked with tears and dust. Leaves and twigs were stuck in her hair.

  Back at the shack, he quickly finished taping the fixtures. He plugged the paint sprayer into the generator, then jerked the cord to start it up. The racket of the motor took his mind away from the girl’s accusations.

  He really couldn’t expect her to understand.

  Chapter 27

  Monday, 2 p.m.

  With its green painted walls and metal desks, the Chicago police precinct looked like any other government office. The difference was that these city employees carried guns.

  “How long did Schein work in your department?” Forte asked the lean man with the brush cut on the other side of the desk.

  Captain Stephen Taylor sat with his hands folded across his chest and thought for a moment. “I’d say… about three-and-a-half years.” He brushed a piece of lint off his jacket. “And he did a great job. He was probably the best man I had in a high-risk situation. He just went bonkers there at the end.”

  “How so?”

  “He began talking about the abortion doctors, how they were killing babies.” Taylor shrugged. His shoulders were those of a man who could still be leading the Chicago SWAT team if he hadn’t been promoted to precinct chief. “Because he was on the SWAT team, he wasn’t assigned to that kind of duty, guarding the abortion clinics. But he began doing volunteer stuff with the abortion protestors, making sure that if a fight came up between the pro-life people and the pro-choice guys, that his side didn’t come out on the short end.

  “The final straw came when he was part of the team sent in to rescue a group of hostages at a clinic. The so-called pro-life terrorists were not armed but they had bopped a couple of the clinic’s escorts. We sprayed them all down with tear gas and dragged the hostage-takers out onto the street. Schein refused to participate. Disobeyed a direct order. I hated to do it, but I had to can him.”

  On the captain’s desk was a grouping of photos in stand-up frames. Some family photos of him and his wife and two teenage daughters, another of him 20 years younger in dress blues, and one of him and Schein and an older man.

  Forte pointed to the picture. “May I?”

  Taylor nodded.

>   The man in the picture had his arm around Schein’s shoulder. A sailboat floated in the distant background of the photo. Forte wondered if the older man was Schein’s father. The little that he had found on Schein on the Internet had to do with some national SWAT team competitions he had won and a couple of pro-life web pages that listed the man as a consultant for “rescues of the unborn.”

  Taylor took the picture back from Forte. He pointed at the white-haired man in the photo. “This is Father Tim Buell. He was the headmaster at the orphanage where Jerah grew up. The only dad he ever knew.”

  “He’s here in Chicago?” Forte asked.

  “Yeah, he’s in the book.”

  “You do some sailing?”

  “Yeah. We used to sail a lot together, Jerah and me. Some good times, believe it or not. He was a loyal guy. It killed me to have to fire him.”

  The phone rang and the police captain answered it. “No, tell him that insurance won’t kick in again for 30 days.” He paused. “Good. Take care of it.” He hung up. “Paperwork and personnel stuff. It’s mostly what I do now.” His brows were lowered over his eyes as he looked at Forte. “This stuff about Jerah Schein. You are pretty sure he was involved in the Lamberth business?”

  “Yeah,” Forte said. “Pretty sure. Does that surprise you?”

  Taylor looked thoughtful. “Nothing surprises me any more after 20 years as a cop. Jerah was a friend, but he had his dark moments. I can see him doing some pretty drastic stuff if he believed it was the right thing to do.” He picked up a pencil and tapped it on the desktop. “But the FBI isn’t on to Schein yet, right?”

  Forte was stone-faced. “Don’t know. I’m not part of their investigation.”

  Taylor nodded. “Probably a good thing.”

  Forte stood up. “Yeah. All the way around.”

  * * *

  “Coffee? Tea?” asked Father Tim Buell. “A glass of red wine? I have to drink a glass a day for my cholesterol.”

  Forte turned from the fireplace where logs crackled. The small town of Langston north of Chicago was enduring a late cold snap. “Coffee would be good, Father.”

  “Just call me Tim. Be right back.”

  The house was small and tidy with the type of fastidious yard that people produce when they have lived most of their lives without one. Buell’s career had been spent giving hope to abandoned kids in the inner city of Chicago. Forte almost regretted having to talk to him about Schein.

  The white-haired man came back into the den and put a saucer and a cup of black coffee in front of Forte on the coffee table. Forte sat. Buell set down his own cup and shuffled over to a built-in bookshelf next to the fireplace. He reached up for a thick photo album, his cardigan sweater rising above his belt in the back to expose thread-bare corduroy belt loops.

  “This is my book of memories,” Buell said, plopping the book on the table. The coffee cups jumped at the impact. Forte held his cup steady but he could see a drop of coffee had splashed out of the old man's cup.

  Buell started thumbing through the album, whispering to himself the names and events of the boys whose photos sparked his recollection. He looked up suddenly at Forte. “You say you were a friend of Jerah’s?”

  Forte nodded. “I was pretty close to him at one time, yes. But, sadly, I lost track of him.”

  Buell, still hunched over the album, pushed his wire-rim glasses up on his nose. “Yes, he is like that. You will hear from him for a while, then he drops out of sight. He was a moody boy at times.”

  “When did you last hear from him?”

  Buell sat up and ran a hand over his forehead. “It has been quite a while ago, actually. Probably seven or eight months. He said he was going to be out of the country for a long while. Now that I think of it, it’s probably been the longest time between visits.”

  Forte had a momentary pang of conscience at his misleading the old man. But he had to know as much as he could about Schein. “You were close.”

  “Yes. He was always respectful and obedient, unlike some of the boys we had at the orphanage. Jerah wanted to become a priest at one time, you know.”

  “Is that right?” Forte said to keep the chat moving.

  “Yes, he would study the Bible and his catechisms for hours it seemed.”

  “How old was he when you first met him?”

  “About five, I believe it was,” Buell said. “His mother was, how can I say this, rather unstable. She had come to Chicago in the summer of 1968 for the protests at the Democratic Convention. She told everyone she was raped by a policeman and that was how Jerah was conceived. Forgive my bluntness, but Jerah’s father could have been one of many, according to the word on the street.”

  Forte took a drink of coffee. “And she gave him up for adoption.”

  “Yes. The Department of Human Services actually took Jerah away from her. She just drifted in the streets, even when the church and others tried to help her. She was arrested several times for drugs and finally died of an overdose the year after Jerah came to the orphanage.” Buell took off his glasses and polished them with the hem of his sweater. “I believe she knew she was doomed and wanted to make a safe place for her son. It was her most selfless act for the boy by far.”

  Forte let the information sink in. He could relate to feeling adrift as a child. “What was he like, his hobbies, any activities…”

  “Oh, he was a good student. In fact, he was probably harder on himself than anyone else, his teachers or coaches included. He was an outstanding athlete in basketball and baseball. What he really loved was sailing, a hobby of mine, too.”

  “You have a boat?”

  “I had a 22-foot Catalina that we took out on Lake Michigan in the summers. We had a grand time.”

  “Did you ever sail anywhere else?”

  Buell stopped thumbing through the album. “No, but it’s funny you should ask.” He leaned back and sipped his tea. “When Jerah was young, the church youth group went to Central America on mission trips for two or three weeks at a time. Jerah loved it there. Belize was where we spent most of our time. He always said he would love to sail a big boat all the way down there.” Buell had a faraway look on his face.

  Forte felt a buzz. “Do you know if he ever got to do it?”

  “No, I don’t know if he did. But it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if he made it there. He usually accomplished what he set out to do.”

  “No,” said Forte, “it wouldn’t surprise me either.”

  Chapter 28

  Monday, 5:15 p.m.

  Forte slumped against the pay phone at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, watching the crowds of people hurry past him while he was on hold. A pair of flight attendants smiled at him as they passed.

  The on-hold music on the phone stopped abruptly. A woman’s voice came through the phone line. “Jon Brach is out of the office at the moment. May I take a message?”

  “No,” said Forte. “I’ll check back.”

  He hung up and walked over to the seating area where he had been waiting for his flight back to New Orleans. He had been calling in throughout the day, hoping to hear that Hallee had been released. No word yet.

  Forte knew he had done everything in his power to get the girl back. That certainty, however, failed to erase his vague sense of failure at how things had turned out. He closed his eyes and listened to the airport sounds around him.

  Within two minutes he got up again and went back to the bank of phones on the wall. He punched in a long-distance code and waited. Jackie Shaw picked up.

  “Hi. How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Like I was thrown down on concrete and shot in the leg,” she said. “Actually I’m doing fine. The doctor got out the shotgun pellets. Two of them. They were fairly close to the surface. He told me to take it easy for a few days.”

  Forte listened. She had done a good job holding off the attackers the night before. Was it only yesterday?

  “Any word from the District Attorney’s office ab
out releasing Kyra?” he asked.

  “An assistant D.A. took the confession from the guy who shot up the van, the one who turned himself in. The man said he was not directed by Ricardo Aguilar to attack the shelter. He was vague about exactly who gave him the orders. But the D.A. will probably sign the order to release Kyra to her grandmother’s care pretty soon.”

  “Good,” said Forte.

  The line was silent.

  “What?” he said.

  “Oh, nothing,” Jackie said.

  “Nothing?” Forte could feel the effect of the sleep deprivation.

  “Well, you sound tired. Is everything okay?” She did not ask him where he was or what he was doing out of town.

  He rubbed his eyes. When he opened them, a small boy was walking past. He stuck his tongue out at Forte.

  “Al?”

  Forte shifted the phone to his other ear. “Yeah, it’s been a fun-filled weekend, hasn’t it? I just need some more sleep. I’ll check in later.” They said goodbyes and he hung up.

  Forte checked his watch. Another hour until his flight went out. He walked around the corner to a lounge, ordered a Coke, and asked the bartender to change the TV channel to CNN. A commercial for Internet stock trading flashed across the screen.

  He thought about Schein and what he knew about him. The guy had a difficult start in life but a lot of people had overcome worse beginnings. He was a star athlete who had earned attention for his victories. Schein showed evidence of wanting to do the right thing, according to Father Buell. His will and discipline had produced a determination that usually allowed him to reach the goals he set for himself. He had believed that murdering the doctor was the right thing. He had believed he was saving lives.

  How did the kidnapping of Hallee Lamberth fit in? Somehow the profile of Schein didn’t match up with someone who would threaten a child in order to get money.

  Would Schein really hurt her? Or was he bluffing?

  From what he had heard, Hallee’s grandparents were not taking the chance of finding out. His reporter friend Brach had told him earlier that the ransom money from the Lamberth family was ready to be transferred to the offshore account before noon today.

  The commercial was over. The smile was gone from the anchorwoman's face as she read from the teleprompter. “CNN has just learned that Hallee Lamberth, the kidnapped daughter of murdered abortion doctor Tyson Lamberth, was not released to her family today. The ransom money, however, had already been transferred to an offshore bank account before authorities discovered that the duffel bag that was supposed to contain Hallee Lamberth was stuffed with pillows.” The woman continued reading the news.