by John C. Ford
My parents had left me alone with a single responsibility—Daniel—and now he’d been kidnapped.
Who? The mayor? Kate Warne? Alexander Corbett? How could any of them possibly know that Tina and I had discovered the bribery scheme? Would those people really do something like this?
They wanted the pictures. Mike was the only one who knew I had them. Mike? No way. He’s my best friend, he couldn’t do this. . . .
I grabbed the portable phone and stalked around the house, but it didn’t do much to fight the feeling that I was drowning in my own uselessness. I had to keep the house line clear for the call from whoever had taken Daniel. My cell was lying on the kitchen table—I used it to dial Tina.
“Yo,” she answered, and I heard my voice come out in a rush. When I got to the fact that Daniel had been taken, she told me to hang tight and clicked off. The call had lasted about seven seconds.
I called Mike next, almost without thinking about it.
“Hey.” His voice was guarded.
“Hey, do you have Daniel with you?”
“No.” Awkward pause. “What do you mean?”
“You have no idea where he is?” I insisted. “Really?”
“No, no clue. What’s going on?”
“Somebody took him, Mike. It’s because of those pictures, and you’re the only one who even knew I had them.”
Tina knew, too, of course. I’d called her out on the boat to tell her I’d found the pictures, and then I spent the night at her place right after. But she didn’t count; she wasn’t the one who’d taken my brother.
“Hold on,” Mike said. “Are you saying he’s been, like, kidnapped?”
“Yeah. You have to tell me everything you know about those pictures. It could help me get Daniel back.”
“I can’t tell you how I got them. I just can’t.”
“They’ve got my brother, Mike.”
“I’m sorry, I know, but I can’t. But look, I didn’t tell anybody you had them. Whoever is asking about those pictures, they didn’t find out you had them from me.”
“But you’re the only one who could have,” I said.
I was milling through the house as we talked, obsessively turning on all the lights, as if it would help. They hadn’t bothered to cover up the fact that they’d searched my room. The bed had been stripped. My books were splashed all over, spines broken and pages creased awkwardly against the floor. They’d taken apart my bookshelf, now just a mess of wooden planks on the floor.
“It wasn’t me, Christopher,” Mike was saying. “I swear to God it wasn’t me. I’m coming over there to help you.”
I was barely listening. The destruction in my room was making me sick. I had just noticed the empty spot on my desk—they’d taken my computer—when a knock came from the front door. The thought of Tina’s company gave me a surge of relief.
“Christopher? Christopher?” It was Mike, still talking on the line.
“Don’t come over. I’ve got to figure out what’s going on here.”
“But Chris—”
I clicked off and raced downstairs, not bothering to look before I swung open the door.
A police cruiser sat big and bulky in the driveway, closer to the house than we ever parked. It was shadowed by the porch and the top of it glowed with the reflection of a far-off streetlight. Looking sideways, I saw Tim Spencer peering through our living-room window. He had one of those cowboy/police hats on, pressing it up against the glass as he looked in. The night was turning black behind him.
“Christopher, hi.”
He pulled open the screen door—it was like a toy in his hand—and trod past me inside. In the living room, he stalked around, forehead wrinkled as he made a quick inspection.
“Why are you here?” I said.
“Some neighbors called. They saw somebody they didn’t recognize enter through the back door earlier.”
“The Gradys?”
“Yeah.”
They lived behind us. I used to cut through their lawn on the way to school until I realized Mr. Grady spent his days looking out their windows, never missing a thing. Daniel never took that route because it was trespassing.
“Mr. Grady, he said it was probably nothing, but he knows your parents are away and decided to report it. Actually, he calls every week about something or other.” Tim glanced around the room again. “So . . . everything okay? Did you have a visitor?”
I shouldn’t have trusted him. He worked with the sheriff, he’d been staking out Tina’s place, and he’d met with Dr. Mobley. And there he was now in the living room, just happening to show up when my little brother got kidnapped. No, I really shouldn’t have trusted him—but I was desperate and he’d been my hero once.
“They took Daniel,” I said.
“What?”
“Daniel’s gone, somebody took him.” I led him into kitchen and showed him the note.
Tim read it over with a blank expression. “This isn’t a joke?”
“No.”
He scrutinized Daniel’s message some more. “They want the pictures,” Tim said softly, to himself. “Christopher, are these pictures—”
The screen door banged. A second later Tina was there in the kitchen, stopping cold when she saw Tim. “What’s he doing here?”
“Take it easy,” Tim said.
“Not likely,” she said.
The whiteboard was right between them. She read the note, then pulled me over to her for a kind of sideways hug thing. I felt weak but stayed put, soaking up her warm, protective energy.
“Really, what are you doing here?” Tina said. “Stalking Christopher’s house now?”
“I came on a call,” Tim shot back. “But I think—”
“It says no police. You’re putting Daniel in jeopardy.”
“Shut up for a second,” Tim barked, then tried to calm himself. “Let’s just step back, okay. I think I know something about what you’re involved in here.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Tina said dryly.
He stepped forward, into her personal space. “Hey, I’m here to help. His brother’s been kidnapped, and arguing isn’t going to help us get him back.” Tim turned to me. “Now tell me, what pictures are they talking about in that note?”
He was looking me square in the eye, holding my shoulders in his hands. Tina gripped my arm. It was like being asked to choose between parents. I was still holding the phone for dear life. Half my mind was focused on it, willing it to ring.
“I want to tell you,” I said, “but we don’t know who to trust. We think the police could be involved.”
“We think you could be involved,” Tina said. “What were you doing out at my house, for one thing? Explain that, at least.”
Tim ignored her, waiting for me to give in, but I didn’t. “It’s a fair question,” I said.
“Yeah, okay,” he said bitterly, pulling a chair out from the kitchen table. “Sit down for a second.” We did, and then Tim leaned across at us. “I’m only saying this because your brother needs help, and I’ll probably deny that I ever said it later.”
“Go ahead,” I said.
And then he started in.
“Stop me if this sounds familiar,” Tim said, “but what if I told you that somebody was murdered, and the medical examiner helped cover it up by calling it a suicide? And what if I told you that he did it because powerful people told him to?”
He knew about Dr. Mobley. Tina propped her elbows on the table. “What people?”
“Maybe the mayor,” Tim said. “Maybe Kate Warne and Alexander Corbett, too.”
“And what’s this supposed to tell us other than the fact that you’re involved somehow?”
“I’m not involved. If you have those pictures, you know a lot more about this than I do. I only know what I do because of Dr. Mobley. He faked Mitch Blaylock’s death certificate—he’s told me that much—under pressure from the mayor.”
“It wasn’t just pressure. The mayor paid him to do it,”
I said.
Tina slapped my arm, but I ignored it.
Tim did, too. “Yeah, he’s admitted that. But then his conscience starting working on him, and he asked me to lunch one day.”
“At Dino’s,” I said.
Mike must have had the pictures even back then—when I sat in the car with him in the parking lot, imagining us like cops on a stakeout. I wondered how scared he must have been that day that I’d find out the truth. I was pretty close to it now, I knew that.
“What has Mobley told you?” Tina said to Tim.
“Not much more. He was feeling me out over lunch. He kept it all very vague. Then his wife died and he really cracked up. He said he wanted to clear his conscience. He told me the mayor was the one who had paid him off, and that Kate Warne and Alexander Corbett were behind it, too.”
“You don’t know how they’re involved?” Tina said.
“No. The mayor told Mobley that they’d all been harassed by the dead guy, Blaylock. Other than that, I have no idea.”
Tina and I shared a look. We’d discovered the blackmail scheme quicker than Tim had. “What about the sheriff?” I said. The sheriff had to know about the cover-up, too—he’d seen Mitch’s body at the hotel, brought it in to the morgue. There was no way he was oblivious.
“He’s Kate Warne’s brother,” Tim said. “If she was in on the murder, the sheriff would have been willing to look the other way.”
“And that’s why Mobley came to you,” I said. “Because the sheriff was in on it.”
“Right. See, I’m investigating my own boss here, in a way. My own police department. I’ve been trying to build a case that I can refer to a State Police task force, but Mobley hasn’t given me anything solid. Meanwhile, you two are popping up everywhere.”
“What do you mean?” Tina said.
Tim sighed, annoyed. “Like when Christopher showed up at the maid’s house the night before she disappeared.” I wondered if I should stick to my story that I wasn’t there, but Tim said, “I know you were out there, so don’t bother denying it. Anyway, that’s why I’ve started keeping an eye on you. That’s why I showed up at your house,” he said to Tina, “trying to warn you off—so something like this wouldn’t happen.”
Tina still looked pretty pissed, but I believed him.
“So now,” he finished at the table, spreading his hands, “tell me what these pictures are all about.”
I made a snap decision and grabbed both phones—my cell and the portable for our home line—off the table. “Can you keep it from the rest of the police?”
“If there’s any good reason to, yeah.”
I turned to Tina. “Tell him everything.”
I didn’t want to do it, but I had to. Parents have the right to know when their son has been kidnapped.
I pressed Send, and a shudder of fear went through me when my dad answered the phone. He started right in with a chipper tone that clawed at my heart, going on about a hike they’d just taken. A brown bear had been climbing up the side of the mountain, maybe—“What do you think, dear? Five hundred yards?”—about five hundred yards away from them. He was glad that I had gotten him those binocu lars for Christmas, they really came in handy. The guide said it was a female. You could see the muscles rolling across her back when she stepped over the rocks. Oh, Christopher, it is absolutely gorgeous out here.
“Dad, stop for a second.”
Then I gave him the worst news he could imagine.
He started asking questions, and a lot of stuff poured out from me—about Dr. Mobley and the sheriff and the mayor and Kate Warne. My dad cut me off because he said I wasn’t making sense. I hadn’t said a word to them about Mitch Blaylock all summer and my story must have sounded looney. In the background, my mom was already making reservations for the next flight home. My dad asked if anyone was with me, and then he asked to talk to Tim Spencer.
I told him I was sorry.
“Put Tim on the phone, Christopher.”
We got the call twenty minutes later.
Tim had already gotten off the cell with my parents. They couldn’t get a flight out of Idaho that night, and they had to make two connections after that. They wouldn’t be back in town before the next evening at the earliest.
Tina had finished filling Tim in on the details. How the mayor took the bribe to fix the case in favor of the golf course, Mitch’s blackmail scheme, the bullet wounds in Mitch’s body, everything. Neither of them had tried to claw each other’s eyes out during the discussion, so obviously relations between them had improved.
We wanted to show Tim the pictures—I had the memory card in my pocket—but they’d taken my laptop away so we couldn’t.
He and Tina were sitting together on the sofa when the call came. I was pacing the living room in front of them. The portable was on the coffee table.
Tina handed it to me gingerly when it rang. “Just find out where he is. It’s going to be all right.”
I pushed the talk button.
“Hello.”
“Christopher?” Daniel’s voice. My heart swelled.
“Yeah.” Now he would tell me how it had been a trick. Or how he had escaped his kidnappers using a ballpoint pen and advanced principles of physics. But he didn’t.
“Just bring the pictures and yourself.” His voice had a robotic quality—he was reading something. “You do that, you’ll get me back.”
“Daniel, are you okay? Are you hurt?”
Some rustling on the other end, and then Daniel’s detached voice again. The reading voice.
“There’s a fence at the edge of the golf-course property. Follow it to the bluffs. Bring the pictures and you’ll get me back.”
“Daniel, are you okay? Cough or something to let me know.”
He didn’t cough.
“Be here in thirty minutes,” Daniel said, and then the line clicked off.
I ran out the front door. Tina didn’t catch up to me until I was already at the Escort.
She barred the door when I went for my keys. “What’s going on, Chris?”
“He told me to meet them alone. I just want Daniel back.”
Tina sighed and looked to Tim, who had bounded out right behind her.
“You’ve got to let us come,” he said.
“I don’t want to chance it. I just want Daniel back. Sorry, Tina, but I don’t care about the pictures anymore.”
“Of course not,” she said. “But . . .”
They were struggling for a way to help me. In the moment they hesitated, I forced the door open and took off.
29
I made it out to the New Petoskey Resort on a single shot of adrenaline. The drive gave me something to do, something to occupy the nervous energy that had been crawling through me. It hadn’t been easy to leave Tina back at the house, but I didn’t second-guess myself. Whoever had done this was acting rationally—they wanted the pictures back. Either to destroy them or to blackmail the mayor and the others. They had put Daniel at risk to get the pictures—and maybe they would pay for it somehow—but they were doing it for a reason, not because they were crazy, and they had no motive to hurt him. That’s what I kept telling myself.
The hollow quiet of the golf course stilled my mind. I drove the thin road along the resort property, windows down, watching for the fence that would take me to Daniel. The fairways sat empty, strangely peaceful, spotted with curved pockets of sand. I passed one of the putting greens, where the yellow flag hung limp on the pole like a nightcap. Then a stand of bushes that obscured my view for hundreds of yards. They stopped abruptly, and I saw a long, metallic flash running away from me. The fence.
I crossed to the shoulder and parked. The far side of the course was a flat field of trees. I set off along the edge of it, along the fence to the bluffs. Clouds obscured the starlight. I couldn’t see the bluffs yet—ahead of me was only a deep blackness and the whisper of the lake, growing slowly as I walked. I was too shot with fear to feel anything or to think about what lay
ahead. A small breaking sound pricked the air and I stopped, terrified. Sweat ran down my temples. It could have been a squirrel. A bird, maybe. I turned back around, barely making out the Escort behind me.
I walked another quarter mile before I saw him. Daniel stood at a gnarled tree with twisted roots popping from the earth. A hulkish black form stood shuffling awkwardly at his side. The form froze when it saw me, fifty yards away. I had no game plan, no weapons. You could say I was stupid, but I needed to get Daniel back, so I walked straight ahead.
The giant silhouette next to Daniel slowly took shape. It was Bob. Big Bob the ex-boyfriend, of the tiny desk and humble manner, from the New Petoskey Country Club. It didn’t make sense to me then.
Could this all have been the doing of Bob, the guy who stumbled over his words to Tina? Was he Mitch’s partner in the blackmail scheme? Could he have killed Mitch Blaylock himself?
I tried to remember our conversations at the country club. My image of him was a vague blob of hesitant warmth—disappointing, in terms of clues. He worked at the country club, which meant he could have been partners with Mitch. Of course, he also worked in the office—close to Alexander Corbett. Maybe he was Corbett’s muscle, hunting down the blackmail evidence on his behalf.
He was shifting his weight nervously from one foot to another, holding a fistful of Daniel’s green Izod shirt by the back. The collar was pinched up to his neck, keeping him in place. A tight grimace had nested on Bob’s features.
I stopped twenty feet away. “Daniel, you okay?”
He nodded. His eyes were clear and he didn’t look injured. I wondered if he was as scared as I was—it didn’t look like it.
“You better have those pictures,” Bob said. False bravado rang through his voice.
“I’ve got them right here.”
“Okay, then.” Bob shifted some more, eyes darting around. “Y-y-y-you didn’t bring anyone, right?”
“Right.”
“’Cause I, like, saw some lights behind yours.” He peered into the distance, and I could see the sweat creasing his face. His nerves calmed me.
