Trigger Warning

by Allan Leverone

  That was the real reason he’d insisted the kidnappers call every day. He was convinced they would not harm a hair on Janie’s head as long as she served their purposes, but he also knew without question they would eliminate her the minute she became a liability: when Jim Studds was dead.

  Thus, the daily phone calls were not strictly necessary. But Jack couldn’t begin to imagine how Edie must be suffering. Asking her to spend as many as seven days trapped inside his tiny house, pacing and terrified, imagining the worst possible outcome for her child, was hard enough with the knowledge she could speak with Janie every day.

  Asking her to do it without that reassurance would be cruelty of the highest magnitude.

  And Edie would have nothing to occupy her time. She’d already arranged for Chief Cook Mark Goetz to take over the day-to-day operations of The Three Squares Diner for the next week. Mark was hardworking and trustworthy and had been with Edie since the day the diner had opened.

  She told him nothing more than that she needed to take a little time off, and to his credit he’d not asked a single question.

  ***

  The drive seemed to take forever. Jack ran into no significant traffic backups, but being alone in the truck, with only his regrets for company, made the time drag.

  Normally he would listen to music, especially if on an assignment. It helped relieve the stifling tension that was as much a part of his career field as breathing.

  But this was not a music situation. He didn’t want to relieve the tension. He wanted to feel every last ounce of weight pushing relentlessly on his shoulders, wanted to make himself suffer for the hell he’d brought down on Edie and Janie Tolliver.

  He was miserable and he wanted to be miserable. He deserved every last bit of misery karma could send his way, and then some.

  He didn’t know if that feeling would ever change.

  He didn’t care.

  ***

  Jack wasted no time upon his arrival in Newark. There was none to waste.

  He was convinced, based on the lack of any background information online regarding Mike Hargus between 1987 and 2010, that the man had been an operator, probably for the CIA. But Hargus had made one critical error after leaving the agency: he’d kept his real name.

  Whether because he decided secrecy was no longer necessary since he’d begun working for a legitimate political mover and shaker, or because he was simply so arrogant he believed no one would ever connect his name with a shady past, or for some other unknown reason, Mike Hargus had emerged from his nearly quarter-century-long shroud of Internet secrecy using the same name as he’d had when he entered.

  Which meant that even if he was untraceable through normal channels for twenty-three years of his existence, his family was not. The rest of the Hargus clan had presumably not worked for the CIA, because Jack’s Internet search revealed histories typical of the average American for all of them.

  And there were three.

  Mike Hargus had one sibling, a brother named Jimmy.

  Both his parents were still alive.

  All three lived in Newark.

  Jimmy Hargus was two years younger than Mike and worked as a cabbie across the river in Manhattan. Tracking him down during his workday would be difficult and probably pointless, so Jack decided to hold him in reserve for now and concentrate on the retired parents. If he couldn’t get what he needed from the elderly Harguses this afternoon he would stick around and hunt Jimmy down tonight.

  And be as forceful as necessary.

  One way or the other he wasn’t leaving New Jersey without the information he needed.

  24

  Locating Bruce and Margaret Hargus was a simple matter. According to Google, they still lived in the East Newark home in which they’d raised their children decades earlier. The only real uncertainty was whether the couple would be home when Jack arrived.

  They were both in their eighties, so he liked his chances.

  A small, well-used Hyundai sat in front of a dilapidated garage when Jack swung into the driveway and he nodded in appreciation. Someone was here.

  He wasted no time exiting his truck and approaching the house. The “reporter working on a news story” angle had worked so well for him last night that he figured he’d give it a shot again today. He arranged his features into the kind of earnest sincerity he imagined a newspaper reporter might exhibit and approached the front door, notepad in hand.

  Before he could press the bell the door swung open and an elderly man scowled up at him.

  “Ain’t interested,” the man said.

  Jack raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

  “I said I ain’t interested.”

  “In…”

  “In whatever you’re selling, or whoever you want me to vote for, or whatever municipal improvement project you’re pitching. I don’t care about any of it and I’m not interested, and you can just move along, thank you very much.”

  The old man started to swing the door closed and Jack held up his hands and slipped his foot as unobtrusively as possible between the door and the frame. The man stopped before shutting the door on Jack’s foot but his scowl deepened and what little patience he had already seemed to have vanished.

  Jack spoke quickly. “It’s nothing like that, sir. I’m not selling anything and I honestly couldn’t care less who you vote for in any election.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “Just a couple of minutes of your time is all. You see, my name is Ted Sanders and I’m a freelance journalist. I’ve been signed to do a story for The New Yorker magazine about the difficulty in protecting public figures in a dangerous world.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “Well I was hoping to speak with your son, Mike. As director of security for Maryland’s lieutenant governor, he would make the perfect interview subject for my piece.”

  “So what are you doing here? You do realize Maryland’s lieutenant governor spends most of his time in Maryland, right? Mike hasn’t lived here since he was eighteen.”

  The old man gazed unblinkingly up at Jack. The routine that had worked so well on a young, inexperienced intern last night was going nowhere fast on the cynical old retired guy this afternoon.

  “Yes, sir, I do realize that. May I please come in? I give you my word I won’t take up much of your time.”

  “Who’d you say you work for?”

  “Well, I’m a freelance journalist. I work for whoever will pay me to write, but in this case the story has been commissioned by The New Yorker.”

  The old guy sighed. Then he shrugged and stepped back, opening the door and gesturing reluctantly inside the house. “Come on in.”

  The scowl never left his face.

  Jack stepped into a small but immaculate living room. The furniture had to be decades old but it was clean and well cared for. As far as he could see there wasn’t a speck of dust on any surface or an item out of place anywhere in the room. A TV in the corner was tuned to a national news broadcast but the sound had been muted.

  An elderly woman sat on one end of the couch. She was so tiny Jack almost missed her as he took in his surroundings.

  When he noticed her he crossed the room and took her hand gently. “Hello. My name is—”

  “Ted Sanders,” she interrupted with an impish smile. “I heard you at the door. I’m Marge and you’ve already met my husband, Bruce.”

  Jack’s immediate reaction was one of surprise. The couple struck him as so different in temperament he wondered how in the hell they’d stayed married for so long.

  Bruce Hargus limped into the room and grunted something, gesturing at an overstuffed chair that had been placed at an angle opposite the couch. Jack took it as an invitation to sit and did so, opening the notebook and removing a pen from his breast pocket.

  He clicked the pen and held it over the open page. “As I mentioned at the door,” he said, “I’m working on a story about the difficulties inherent in protecting public figures in the modern era
, and I was hoping you could help me locate your son so I could ask him a few questions for my piece.”

  “Bullshit,” Bruce Hargus said. He’d taken a seat next to his wife on the couch and he glared at Jack defiantly.

  “Bruce, please,” Marge Hargus said. “Don’t be rude to our guest.”

  “We didn’t invite him here, which means he ain’t our guest.”

  He waved at her to be quiet and continued, never taking his eyes off Jack’s. “And I’ll tell you something else. You ain’t no reporter. I’ve been friends with a beat guy for the Newark Star-Ledger for thirty years, and if you’re a journalist, I’m Mickey Mouse. You don’t see no mouse ears around here, do ya?”

  Jack clicked his pen shut.

  Slipped it into his pocket.

  Closed his notebook and placed it in his lap.

  Tried to figure out how to proceed.

  This had gone nothing like he’d expected. From the get-go this old bastard had been way ahead of him.

  He had to change tactics, obviously.

  He made a snap decision. What he was about to do was risky, maybe even foolish. But Bruce Hargus’s voice had been filled with resentment and hurt when he’d commented at the front door that his son had not lived with them since he was eighteen.

  It had not been the tone of a father proud of his son.

  “You’re right,” Jack said. “I’m not a reporter.”

  “News flash,” Bruce Hargus said. “No shit.”

  Jack lifted his wallet out of his rear pants pocket and fished around inside for a moment until he found what he was looking for. Then he removed a small, two-by-three inch photograph. It was a headshot of a smiling blonde girl. Her eyes were dancing and her nose was wrinkled as if the photographer had just said something a seven-year-old might find funny.

  He placed the picture in his palm and used his right forefinger to rotate it until the smiling blonde girl was looking outward. Then he held his palm under Bruce Hargus’s nose.

  He never said a word.

  Hargus glanced between the photo and Jack’s face. The scowl was finally gone, but it had been replaced by a look of confusion.

  For a long moment no one spoke. Mrs. Hargus leaned forward and craned her neck to see.

  At last Bruce Hargus shrugged. “Yeah? It’s a kid. So what?”

  “So it’s not just ‘a kid.’ It’s my girlfriend’s daughter.” He wondered briefly whether the girlfriend part was still true and decided probably not.

  He continued on anyway. “This little girl is named Janie and she’s been kidnapped. I’d like to know—”

  “Mike is not a kidnapper,” Bruce Hargus snapped, his jaw jutting out aggressively.

  Jack sat for a moment. He matched glares with Bruce Hargus while Marge turned sheet-white next to her husband.

  “I find it interesting,” Jack said, “that your initial reaction is to defend your son against a charge I never made. There are a dozen reasons I might be here that have nothing to do with Mike being a kidnapper. A hundred. Yet your gut response is to assume I believe your son took this little girl away from her mother.”

  Bruce Hargus’s jaw snapped shut angrily but he said nothing.

  “Your reaction tells me that no matter what you say, you do think he’s capable of kidnapping this innocent child. Not only do you think he’s capable of it, deep down you believe he did it.”

  The old man opened his mouth to speak, and Jack prepared to take a tongue-lashing.

  But before Hargus could say a word, his wife interrupted.

  “I want to speak to you in the kitchen, Bruce. Now.” Her voice was clipped and trembling but carried the tone of a woman who would brook no argument.

  Bruce Hargus sat completely still for a heartbeat before pushing himself to his feet and limping silently out of the room. Marge followed him, ashen-faced, refusing to look at Jack.

  He sat for a couple of minutes, getting antsier as time ticked away. He was tempted to follow them, if for no other reason than to satisfy himself that the old couple wasn’t going to return with a couple of handguns and start blasting away. The possibility seemed ludicrously unlikely, but he’d seen stranger things in his career.

  And the only thing crazier than worrying about getting shot by these two would be getting shot by these two.

  He started to rise but before he could, they re-entered the living room through the door they’d exited maybe five minutes prior. Nobody was carrying a gun—except Jack, of course—and nobody started blasting away. He sank back into his chair and waited to see what would happen next.

  Bruce Hargus stalked to the couch and sat in the spot his wife had previously occupied. His mouth was closed but he was clenching his jaw so tightly Jack could see the muscles corded under his weathered skin.

  Mrs. Hargus took the seat closest to Jack and to his surprise, began speaking. She talked so softly he had to lean forward in his seat and concentrate hard to catch the words.

  “Michael disappeared from our lives for a very long time. Initially he went into the military, some secret branch where he wasn’t allowed to talk about what he was doing.”

  Jack listened quietly, letting the woman proceed at her own pace. Bruce sat next to her, simmering, but it was obvious he wasn’t going to interrupt. At least not at the moment.

  “We didn’t see our son for more than twenty years,” she said. “I mean, not once. Not a single Christmas or birthday, not even when Bruce suffered a stroke eight years ago.”

  Jack glanced at Bruce Hargus. He glared back, his face flushed and angry.

  “I’m sure you can imagine how difficult that was for us,” Marge continued. “Then, when he finally left the military, he started coming around again. Not a lot, but every once in a while he would show up unannounced. He’d stop in, visit for a couple of hours, and then leave and we wouldn’t see him again for weeks or even months.”

  She sighed heavily and Jack thought she might stop talking but she didn’t. Her eyes moistened and she took a moment to compose herself, but then she resumed her narrative.

  “Something changed inside Michael during those twenty-odd years he was gone. He came back different. Hard. Unfeeling. He’d never been an easy child. Growing up he got into trouble, was hard to control. But now…”

  She paused and Bruce Hargus leaned forward and opened his mouth to speak. She lifted her hand to shush him, exactly as he had done to her earlier, and he huffed and fumed but sat back without a word.

  “Now,” she continued, “Michael frightens me. His eyes are vacant. Empty. Maybe they were always that way and I just don’t want to remember.”

  A tear rolled down her left cheek, followed immediately by one on her right. Still she kept speaking.

  “You say Michael is involved in the kidnapping of that beautiful little girl. Look into your heart, Mr. Sanders, or whatever your name really is. Do you truly believe what you’re saying?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I do. I don’t just believe it, I’m certain of it.”

  She nodded.

  Sighed again. The sound was desolate, a stiff breeze rattling the shutters on an abandoned desert cabin.

  Said, “What do you need from us, Mr. Sanders?”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Hargus. I know this can’t be easy.”

  “What do you need?”

  “I need to know where your son would go if he absolutely had to keep something hidden and out of sight for a week.”

  “Something like a little girl.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She sighed and dropped her head.

  Lifted it and composed herself. “Well, I don’t know. As I said, Michael disappeared from our lives for more than two decades. And even in the years since he’s been back, he shares nothing with us and we rarely see him. I honestly don’t have a clue where—”

  “The cabin,” Bruce interrupted.

  Marge Hargus fell silent and blinked.

  “The cabin,” she repeated, a hint of wonder in her voice. “Of course. I
t’s been so long since we gave that thing to the boys I’d forgotten all about it.”

  Jack felt his pulse begin to race. “Cabin?”

  Selling out his son seemed to have drained all the life from Bruce Hargus. The previously animated—if uncooperative—man closed his eyes. He rested his head on the couch back and ran a hand tiredly over his face. He suddenly looked every bit as haggard as did Mrs. Hargus.

  Marge gave her husband a long look of concern before returning her attention to Jack.

  “That’s right,” she said. “A cabin. It’s been in the family for generations. Right on the water, but I’m not a water person and neither is Bruce. For that matter, neither is Michael’s brother. I’m sure it’s been fifteen years since Jimmy set foot inside the damned place, and it’s been twice that long for us.”

  “I assume this cabin is secluded?”

  “Oh, secluded doesn’t begin to describe it. Even in the middle of the summer tourist season you feel like you’re the only people on the face of the earth when you’re there.”

  “Where’s this cabin located, ma’am?”

  “New Hampshire. A place called Lake Winnipesaukee.”

  Jack had had a lifetime’s worth of experience in hiding his emotions. A blank stare and a slack expression went a long way for a man in his line of work. But he doubted he’d ever had to work as hard as he did right now to avoid showing his excitement.

  Lake Winnipesaukee was less than a two-hour drive from Edie Tolliver’s Southern New Hampshire neighborhood. Jack hadn’t been to the lake in years, but he knew it was large, and if the cabin were as secluded as Marge Hargus claimed, it would provide a near-perfect location in which to stash a kidnap victim for a relatively short period of time.

  “Can you give me the precise location of the cabin?” He successfully kept all emotion out of his voice, but still Marge assessed him with a look that told him that for all of Bruce’s bluster, she was the force to be reckoned with in the Hargus family.

  “You’re not going to the authorities with this information, are you, Mr. Sanders.” She didn’t phrase it as a question.