by Ace Collins
As the doors opened into the basement, Meeker stepped out and continued her lecture.
“The only thing we’ve got that we can really use in this case is the Packard. We know it is tied to the case. We know it was the drop point. We know it was stolen and resold. We know it once had the ransom money in it.”
“I know we know all that stuff,” Reese shot back, “but cars don’t talk.”
“Evidence does,” she corrected him. “And the car is evidence. And there is always emotion connected to evidence. Show a suspected murderer a photo of his victim lying dead at the crime scene and nine times out of ten there will be a reaction. Same thing when a thief is asked to hold something he’s stolen.” She stopped walking through the evidence room and lab and posed a question, “What is often the only way to find answers when you’ve hit dead ends in cases?”
“Luck?”
“Well, maybe sometimes,” she agreed, “like when you found the Packard. But consider this, in most cases the trump card is the press. If we can get every newspaper in the country involved in this case, then maybe we’ll find Marge Hooks or our mystery car salesman.”
Shaking his head, the man grimly announced, “Our case is ancient news. We aren’t going to push the war in Europe off the front pages. Dead cases generate no interest, and they don’t sell any newspapers. Besides, the kidnapping involved a small-town family that has no connections to anyone who is rich or a celebrity. This isn’t Lucky Lindy; this just a poor family who somehow got messed up in something they didn’t deserve.”
“Follow me,” Meeker ordered.
Turning with her, Reese’s wingtips matched the woman’s pumps stride for stride. As they rounded a corner, he spied her trump card. As they approached the far wall he shrugged. “It’s the Packard. I see it’s been painted back to its canary color.”
As they stopped alongside the car, she announced, “It’s just like it was when it was taken. The fender is fixed, and the paint is the factory color. I made sure of that. I got a list from Carole Hall of the things they kept in the glove box. The maps, a fingernail file, a screwdriver, a few sticks of Doublemint, and tin of aspirin are just where they should be.”
“And?”
“And this is now my car,” she proudly explained. “I’m going to drive this everywhere I go. And we are going to put out a nationwide press release trumpeting that the FBI, along with the President’s special crime unit, is putting this car into service to track down the man in the sketch. Within hours his picture will be circulated by wire services all over the country. In truth, probably all over the world, too.”
“And you think the papers will bite?” Reese asked incredulously. “It’s old news!”
“You bet they will bite,” she bragged. “They’ll bite like hungry fish after a live, wiggling worm. Walter Winchell has already written a piece on it. It will run this weekend on the wire. Lowell Thomas is doing a radio program on the way we are using the Packard, and Universal Newsreels is not only featuring the story, but is offering a reward of ten thousand dollars.”
“How did you manage all this?” he demanded.
“After I mapped out the idea,” she said, “I made one call.”
“Who?”
“Eleanor.”
“I keep forgetting about your family connections.”
As they continued to study the car, she dropped her voice. “Do you think it has a chance at working?”
“It just might,” he admitted. “Having the press spreading the word often generates leads. Maybe one of them will be something we need. But have you considered that this stunt might well backfire? If the girl’s still alive and the kidnappers get spooked by this media blitz, they might kill her.”
Meeker walked over to the car, opened the door, and took her place behind the wheel. She let her eyes fall on the speedometer and said, “Thirteen thousand, four hundred and seventy-six miles. How many more miles do you think we’ll have to put on the Packard to solve the case?”
He shrugged.
Looking toward Reese, she admitted, “I thought of the campaign costing Rose her life. In fact I almost backed out because of it.”
He moved to the door before asking, “What changed your mind?”
“I didn’t make the decision,” she quietly explained. “Carole Hall was the one who assured me she wanted to take the risk.”
“If the worst happens,” Reese solemnly asked, “and you and I see the worst that can happen every day—can she live with the knowledge that she helped cause her daughter’s death?”
“Henry, could you live with not knowing if your daughter was dead or alive? Was being loved or abused? Could you live looking at every child you saw and wondering if that child was yours?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. He paused a moment before continuing, “How do you live with it?”
A confused look crossed her face as she looked back at her partner. He only allowed her to suffer for a moment before making the admission.
“I sensed a long time ago that this case meant something more to you. Do you remember that?”
“Sure,” she replied, “and I told you every case was special.”
“But not this special.” He caught her eyes and held them with his own. After taking a deep breath, he continued, “I did some digging into your past. Your sister was kidnapped.”
Tears filled her eyes. “You had no right!”
“You’re my partner. This thing was eating at you too much. I had to know why. Now I do, and I understand. I’ve read the case files.”
She turned back toward the wall and shook her head. She should have told him. She shouldn’t have tried to keep it below the surface. After all, it was why she used her connections to get them the case. Yet he didn’t know everything. He couldn’t from a case file. That only held the cold and static facts. It wouldn’t contain anything of the sister she’d known and loved.
“I was eleven when my younger sister was snatched,” she began, as she turned back toward Reese. “If you studied the file you know that Emily was just three, a few months older than Rose. My dad was a prosecutor who was working a case against a man named Perello. Perello was a part of a New York City mob that was heavily into drugs, bootlegging, prostitution, and gambling. One day my mother took Emily to a city park to play. Emily was there one moment and gone the next.” The agent glanced over to her partner. “We got the standard ransom notice, and it was paid. But they didn’t give Emily back. We never got her back.”
“I’m sorry,” Reese whispered.
“I know,” Meeker assured him. “But there is more, and you need to hear it. Let me tell you about what not getting Emily did to my parents. That stuff is not in the case files. My father threw himself into his work, but he was never really the same again. Mom? Well, she sleepwalked through life for a while and did her best to be a good mother to me. Yet her spirit was broken.”
“I can’t imagine,” Reese noted.
Meeker nodded. “We never went anywhere that Mother’s eyes weren’t searching the crowd looking for Emily. I never knew a day when she didn’t cry. That was my life. It was completely filled with gloom. When I went to college, Mom retreated into a shell. She spent a lot of time sleeping. One day she took a handful of pills and died. There was no note and I’m not sure she meant to kill herself, but I knew she needed to find a way to end the pain.”
The room was a quiet as a tomb. Meeker, who had maintained a strong, deliberate tone through the whole narrative, now turned her head toward the window. Her eyes were moist, and she felt as if someone had pushed a fist down her throat. She hadn’t been this wrung out in years. But at least now he knew the whole story.
“What about your father?” Reese softly inquired.
Meeker dabbed her eye as she turned. “Dad soldiered on. He somehow didn’t break down until five years ago. He took me out to eat at a place in Manhattan. Who should walk in but Geno Perello! Dad tossed down his napkin, charged across the room, and slugged the thug
in the face. What followed next wasn’t pretty. Two middle-aged men, dressed in dinner jackets, whaling each other like six-year-old boys. No one tried to separate them as they rolled over tables and staggered around the floor. Dad ended the fight by pinning Perello to the floor and fracturing the man’s skull with a champagne bottle.”
Meeker allowed the long-buried image to linger in her mind for a moment before continuing, “In front of a shocked crowd, I crossed the room and helped Dad off the floor. His face was flushed, his knuckles bleeding, and he was so mentally and physically spent he could barely make it to a chair. A few seconds later his hands went to his chest, and he fell face forward onto the table. They told me later it was a heart attack that killed him. I still think it was the ugliness of what losing his child had brought into his life that really did him in. He just couldn’t live with the anger or the emptiness anymore.”
Her eyes met his. “You asked me if Carole could live not getting her daughter back. And the answer is no, she can’t live with it. My parents couldn’t either. What you do is go on living in spite of it. At least for a while.”
Turning away from the car, Reese did something that was almost unknown to his nature. For the first time since childhood, he said a prayer.
Chapter 46
October 3, 1940
The leads started to trickle in the moment the stories started to run on radio and in the newspapers. After the newsreel story hit theaters, the FBI offices were flooded with tips. The man in the sketch had been seen by eyewitnesses in a thousand different places all over the United States, Mexico, Canada, and even Europe. One of the most unique leads came from a woman in Maryland who swore that the man’s name was Fritz Schultz and he was a member of Hitler’s high command. Another one that brought grim smiles at FBI headquarters identified him as John James, the butler for the British royal family.
“He does look a bit like James,” Reese noted as he tossed the Brit’s photo back onto his desk.
Meeker didn’t bother looking up from the stack of information she was weeding through, but she did managed to quip, “A little.”
“How many have been interviewed now?” Reese asked.
“About two hundred!” she said. “I wanted leads and I got them. Something’s bound to come out of these in time.”
A knock on their door was followed by the entrance of a wavy-haired, blond, blue-eyed man blessed with the shoulders of a weight lifter. His fame as a Golden Gloves boxer was proven by both his muscular arms and his masculine grace. “Here’s the latest,” Agent Stan Gates announced while carrying a large box into the room. “Hope you enjoy reading them.”
“There must be a thousand here,” Reese grumbled.
“Actually one thousand two hundred and forty-two,” Gates replied, “but who’s counting?” After he dropped them on Meeker’s desk he shot a grin Reese’s way, turned on his heels, and departed, slamming the door behind him.
“Well, you were begging for something to do,” Reese moaned.
Most of the leads were easy to dismiss, but occasionally there was a tip that rang with a bit of truth. Each one of those was placed in a special basket. Every hour, Meeker would take the keepers next door, where assigned agents made calls to see if they were worth pursuing in greater detail. Usually only one out of ten was. Those few saw field agents in face-to-face meetings. It was past three in the afternoon when the woman finally came across something that seemed like more than a long shot—something she felt deserved her personal touch.
“Okay,” she said, her upbeat tone alerting Reese that she might actually have something worth reading, “this sounds really promising.”
She glanced across the room to her partner. Noting that she had his attention, she continued, “This report is from Oakwood. So the location is right. A woman, Nancy Andrews, claims that the man in the sketch lived there until a few months ago. She calls him spooky.”
“Is that a description or a name?” Reese asked.
“Description.
He raised his chin and grinned. “We are fairly near Halloween. Did she provide a phone number?”
“Yeah, and I’m about to call it. Why don’t you get in on the extension and add any questions you feel need to be asked.”
Meeker picked up the phone and gave the dialing information to the switchboard operator. Two minutes later, Nancy Andrews was on the line.
“Miss Andrews, this is Helen Meeker. I’m working with the FBI.”
“It’s actually Mrs.,” came the quick, no-nonsense reply. Without taking a breath, Andrews continued speaking in a nasal tone. “I’ve been married for twenty-seven years to my wonderful husband, Joe. Well, maybe not wonderful, but he does make enough to pay the bills. Wish he made more so we could afford the nicer things. I’ve wanted a piano in our house since we got married. And worse yet, we never have made that trip to Los Angeles he’s been promising for years. He just keeps dangling that over my head like some kind of joke. Well, I’ve had enough. Next time he mentions it, I’m going to smack him one.”
Meeker shot a glance across the room and noted her partner rolling his eyes. This was going to be one of those calls.
“Anyway, I saw the newsreel at the theater just last week. I went there with my neighbor Gertrude Mason. She doesn’t get out much. Poor dear, her husband died a few years back, and she has no kids. She has spells, too. She gets dizzy as can be a couple of times a week. I’ve told her to go to the doctor, but she won’t do it. Just don’t understand people like that. Do you?”
Seeing her chance, Meeker cut in, “No, I don’t. About this man, the one you said looks like our sketch. You described him as spooky.”
“Oh, him,” Andrews enthusiastically replied. “That’s why I wrote to you. I know who he is.”
“And that’s why we called,” Meeker assured her. “Tell me about him.”
“Oh, I will. Did I mention that Gertie and I thought you looked so pretty in that newsreel? You could be a model. You have the best teeth. Wish I had teeth like that, but I have two bottom ones that just won’t line up with the others. They’re kind of pushed forward. Katie Lots assures me I could get that fixed by a dentist in Chicago, but I just tell her I’m going to have to live with it. My Joe just doesn’t make enough money for us to spend it like that. So I have learned to keep my bottom teeth covered when I talk or when I have my picture taken. Now if I had teeth like yours I’d never shut up. I’d just talk and talk so people could see them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Meeker noted. “Now, about the man …”
“Oh, him! Well he must have moved away a few months back because the Lesters, they own the small house he was renting, have rented it to someone else now—a nice family who has three kids.” As the woman continued to drone on, Meeker jotted down the name of the family that had rented the man the house.
“The youngest one of the Lesters’ kids, I don’t remember her name, is going through that screaming phase. Isn’t that the way most girls are when they are five or six? I know my Elizabeth was like that. Well, we called her Lizzie. She’d scream for no reason at all. It drove Joe crazy, yes it did. He could take only so much, then he’d head off for a walk. Sometimes he didn’t come back for hours. Guess it became a habit. Even though Lizzie lives in Ohio, he still gets up in the middle of our conversations and just goes out for a walk.”
“Mrs. Andrews,” Meeker tried again to steer the woman back to the point of the call, “you said the man in the sketch lived not far from you?”
“A couple of blocks. We really don’t have street names here, or if we do, they never put the signs up. We just get our mail at the post office. We’ve been box 47 ever since we got married. I like stability like that, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the agent assured her. “Do you know where the man went?”
“Heavens, no. I don’t talk to people who look like that. He was scary. Kind of had a sneer on his face. I never saw him smile. Never saw the reason folks would give him odd jobs, like mowing their yar
ds, trimming the hedges, or painting their houses, but they did. That’s how he got by, I guess. But I will tell you this; the picture you ran in the paper was the spitting image of him, except his eyes were a lot more beady and his lips a bit thinner when you saw him in person. He still gives me chills.”
“I see,” Meeker replied. “What else can you tell me about him?”
“Well, he was about Joe’s height, maybe five-nine, kind of stocky but not fat. He drank and smoked a lot. He was at an outdoor concert we had here last year. The Jimmy Martin Band was playing. Have you heard them?”
“No.”
“They’re pretty good, except for their horn player. He hit some bad notes, but maybe he was just having an off night. I always told my girls to never judge someone until you’ve met them twice. Guess that goes for musicians, too.”
“About the man,” Meeker’s tone showed more than a hint of impatience.
“Oh yeah, he literally lit one cigarette with another. A chain-smoker, I think they call them. Anyway, he was there by himself and didn’t applaud even a single time. I thought that was rude.”
“Do you know his name?” the agent cut in.
“Melvin, Marvin, I’m not sure. I remember it started with an M. Never heard his last name. But I know someone who’d know. That’s Sam Johns. He was Abbi Watling’s attorney. That’s why he’d know. And the Lesters would likely know, too.”
Reese looked across to Meeker and shrugged. She signaled for him to jump in on the call. He shook his head and mouthed, “This is your baby; you rock it.”
“Mrs. Andrews,” Meeker said, “who is this Abbi Watling? Do you have her number?”
“Deary, that would really be long distance. She died back in 1936, or was it 1937? No, I’m pretty sure it was ‘36. It was Jean Harlow who died in 1937. Boy, she was a great actress!”
“Why,” Meeker pushed forward, “would this Abbi woman have known this man?”
“Mr. Johns?” Andrews asked, seemingly a bit confused. “I thought I told you Johns was the man to contact. He was Abbi’s attorney.”
