Run the Risk

by Scott Frost

  “You’re under arrest on suspicion of kidnapping and attempted murder. You have the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney.”

  “Murder?” he said weakly.

  “You have no idea how much trouble you’re in.”

  “You’re the one who’s in trouble.”

  Harrison picked up the wastebasket and its contents fell to the floor, along with flakes of ash from the burned edges of papers. He picked up a map out of the pile and spread it on the floor.

  “Pasadena.”

  “Assholes,” the kid said.

  I walked over and knelt down to look at the map. The parade route along Colorado was highlighted in yellow.

  “Look at the X’s,” Harrison said.

  Half a dozen red X’s marked spots along the route at several-block intervals.

  “Lacy was the warm-up act,” I said.

  He nodded. “Smoke grenades and Roundup.”

  Harrison’s finger moved to the top of the map. There was a small red dot from the marker where the roads sloped up into the foothills. It was barely noticeable, almost as if it was a mistake made by folding the map while the ink from the X’s was still wet.

  “That mean anything to you?”

  I looked at it trying to find its place in the investigation, then a chill flushed through my body.

  “Yes . . .” I stared at him silently for a second. “That’s my house.”

  I rose unsteadily to my feet and took several deep breaths, resisting the urge to put my gun to the head of the kid on the floor and demand to know where my daughter was. My eye then caught something across the room. A page from the Times was tacked to the wall. I walked across the room until it was in focus, until it sent a jolt through my heart. It was a photograph of Lacy at the beauty pageant spraying the audience with herbicide. The same red marker that had made the dot on our house on the map had drawn a circle around my daughter.

  Harrison stepped up next to me.

  “Roll the kid over on his back,” I said.

  I stared at the picture of Lacy as Harrison grabbed the kid by the arm and rolled him over onto his back.

  “Ow!” he screamed in pain. “My wrists! My wrists, assholes!”

  I walked over and knelt next to him. Involuntarily, my hand drifted over to the handle of my gun.

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  He stared defiantly at me for a moment, then smiled.

  “Don’t smile at me.”

  “I want a lawyer.”

  My hand drifted from my gun and I placed it on his chest. Beads of sweat were forming on his face.

  “You can’t touch me!”

  I could feel his heart pounding in his chest like a drum.

  “You know who Breem is, don’t you?”

  There was a flash of surprise in his eyes. “I don’t know anything.”

  “Of course you do. You’re a smart kid, probably went to a nice private college in the Green Mountains where you studied art and environmental science.”

  “I’m not talking without a lawyer. And I will file abuse charges against you.”

  “You smug little bastard.”

  I grabbed him by his shirt, lifted him up off the floor, and dropped him on his cuffed wrists. He shrieked from surprise as much as pain. It was one of the advantages of looking something like a suspect’s mother—I could scare the hell out of them with the smallest gesture of violence. And then I realized I had seen him before.

  “I know you.”

  He shook his head.

  “The night of the pageant. You jumped out of your seat and tripped right at my feet. You looked right into my face.”

  Again he shook his head.

  “You were supposed to be part of what Lacy did that night, but you got scared and ran out of the auditorium without doing anything.”

  “No, that’s not—”

  “I think yes. You left Lacy to do it by herself because you didn’t have the balls.”

  “I want a lawyer.”

  “Did you put the gun to the back of Daniel Finley’s head and shoot him at his flower shop? Did you have the balls for that?”

  His eyes grew wide with surprise.

  “On top of kidnapping, you’re going to be charged with murder,” I pressed.

  “No, we don’t hurt people!”

  “Who’s we?”

  “I’m not talking.”

  “Do you know Gabriel?”

  His eyes revealed nothing. He had either learned very quickly to be a better liar or the name was truly new to him.

  “What about Finley’s partner at the shop, Breem?”

  Same result.

  “A couple of hours ago Gabriel wrapped explosives around Breem’s hands. He sat for hours staring at them, locked in a car, going mad, until he began screaming and they blew up. There was skin and bone and blood splattered across every inch of the inside of the car. A piece of a fingernail was stuck in his cheek. Where his hands had been, there was only bone sticking out and blood pumping over his legs like it was coming from a garden hose.”

  As I spoke, his heart began to pound harder and faster against my hand. Sweat ran down the side of his face.

  “Gabriel is a terrorist. He’s not trying to save the planet. He’s going to kill people. He’s going to place a bomb, not a smoke grenade, a real bomb, along the parade route and detonate it. Little kids in their parents’ arms are going to be blown to pieces across Colorado Boulevard. Is that how you want to save the planet? Killing children?”

  “We don’t hurt people!”

  “You can help me stop it. It’s not too late.”

  He shook his head.

  “What’s your name?”

  I could feel my grip on self-control slipping away. All I needed was his name. If he gave me that, the rest would come. I looked at Harrison and shook my head.

  “To hell with him, Lieutenant. He’s a terrorist,” Harrison said loudly, for effect.

  I looked at the kid. “You’re not a terrorist, and you’re not a killer, either, are you?”

  I stood up and walked over to the other side of the room.

  “What do you want to do?” Harrison asked in a whisper.

  I shook my head. “Goddamnit, he knows where my daughter is, or he knows someone who knows.” He had to talk. One way or another, he had to. He wouldn’t leave here until he did.

  “If I ask you to leave the room, no arguments . . .” I said to Harrison.

  Concern flashed in Harrison’s eyes. “Lieutenant—”

  “I don’t care what it costs me, I’m going to find out what he knows about Lacy. You understand?”

  Harrison looked at me for a moment, then nodded.

  “Eric Hanson,” the kid said.

  It was barely a whisper, but it was as good as if he had shouted it from the rooftops. I walked over and knelt next to him.

  “You’re not a murderer, are you, Eric?”

  He looked away from me and stared at the far wall.

  “Then you have to help me stop it, or you’re going to be charged with it.”

  “You’re not lying to me?” His voice sounded as if he were thirteen. I shook my head.

  “No, I’m not lying, this is real.”

  “We don’t hurt people.”

  “Gabriel does.”

  “I don’t know Gabriel.”

  I took out the Xerox likeness of Gabriel and held it up. “Have you ever seen him?”

  Lines appeared around his eyes as he looked at it, then he looked away and shook his head. “I’ve never seen him.”

  “You know who I am? You know I’m Lacy’s mother?”

  He nodded.

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  His eyes seemed to be searching inside himself for some foothold of reason to cling to.

  “I don’t know—”

  “What don’t you know?”

  “We work in cells.”

  “Was Lacy in yours?”

  He began to shake his head. �
�I want a lawyer—”

  “A lawyer isn’t going to stop Gabriel—you can. A lawyer isn’t going to help someone who blew up children on Colorado Boulevard. And that’s what you’re a part of now.”

  “No one was supposed to be hurt.”

  “People already have been. People have been killed.”

  “It wasn’t us. It wasn’t.”

  I could see in his eyes that he was on the verge of tears. I glanced over at Harrison and motioned for him to help me get Eric to his feet. We picked him up and sat him in a chair, and then I knelt in front of him. Sitting up, the lines of stress disappeared from his face and he looked younger. He had a pimple on his neck. His green eyes had a youthful clarity that were clinging desperately to some recent, more innocent past.

  “Was Lacy in your cell?”

  He lowered his eyes and nodded.

  “Who recruited her?”

  He took a breath. “I like Lacy, she’s—”

  “Who recruited her?”

  He hesitated, still clinging to distrust like a life preserver.

  “Eric,” I said softly, “we’re talking about my daughter’s life.”

  He closed his eyes as if that would make it all go away. “I did. I met her at Starbucks. I was following Daniel’s instructions.”

  “Finley? Daniel Finley?”

  He nodded sadly. “They told me he was killed in a burglary.”

  “Who told you?”

  “His partner, Breem. I don’t know the others. We don’t use names . . . just letters.”

  “Eric, it wasn’t a burglary. He was killed because he knew who Gabriel was. Gabriel put a gun to the back of Daniel’s head and pulled the trigger like he was a steer in a slaughterhouse. The bullet exploded inside his skull, killing him instantly.”

  He shook his head and whispered, “God.”

  “Why was Lacy kidnapped?”

  He had the appearance of a small child lost in a shopping mall.

  “Why?”

  “For the money.”

  “Why Lacy?”

  “After what she did at the pageant, Finley thought it would look like antienvironmentalists did it. No one would get hurt, it was just to raise money. If you didn’t pay, she’d be released.”

  I didn’t want to ask the next question but I had to. It would have been worse to hear someone else ask it.

  “Was Lacy part of it? Did she know?”

  His chin dropped to his chest and he didn’t answer. I grabbed him by the chin, raising his eyes to mine.

  “Was Lacy a part of it?”

  He sat silently for a moment, then shook his head.

  “She didn’t know. I wanted to tell her but . . . that wasn’t the plan. Breem called her the night of the pageant. Told her to meet him somewhere the next day. That’s when they took her.”

  “Do you know where she is? Where they’re keeping her.”

  He shook his head. “Only an e-mail address.”

  “If you’re withholding information from me—”

  “I’m not, I swear.”

  “Who else is in your cell?”

  “It was just Finley and Lacy.”

  “How many in the others?”

  “I don’t know. That’s how it works. Finley and Breem were the only ones who knew.”

  “Does the name Sweeny mean anything to you? He worked for Finley and Breem at the flower shop.”

  He shook his head.

  “What was your job in the cell?”

  “I was in charge of the stuff for the parade.”

  “How was it acquired?”

  “Finley got it. I don’t know where.”

  “How were you to get the smoke grenades and the Roundup to the others?”

  “I was going to receive a place and time by e-mail.”

  “Did you receive it?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know the e-mail address you were supposed to get the message from?”

  “Yeah.”

  I stood and pulled Harrison to the other side of the room.

  “Can we get a street address from an e-mail?”

  “We would have to go through the service provider. That would take a court order.”

  “We don’t have time for that.”

  “Hicks and the FBI could do it.”

  I had an image of an FBI SWAT team storming a house with my daughter inside. It didn’t sit very well. People who weren’t supposed to tended to get shot.

  “We could send a message from Eric’s computer to the other e-mail address.”

  Harrison nodded and finished the thought.

  “Eric tells them the cops are watching this place and that he has to bring the grenades and Roundup to their location.”

  “It’s worth a try.”

  “I think something’s wrong,” Eric said.

  We both turned.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve sent them five e-mails over the last five hours and they haven’t responded.”

  I walked over and knelt in front of him, placing my hands on his knees.

  “That’s not supposed to happen, is it?”

  He shook his head. “No, someone is always supposed to be there.”

  “Do you know if Finley’s partner, Breem, was at the location you were e-mailing?”

  “He ran the cell, I guess he might have been.”

  “When did you last e-mail them?”

  “About an hour ago.”

  I could feel my heart beginning to beat faster. It was becoming one of those nightmares where you’re trying to get somewhere, but every door you open takes you in the wrong direction.

  “If Breem was at this e-mail location just before he was placed inside the car with a bomb on his lap, then it’s possible the terrorist Gabriel was also there. Eric, if Gabriel knows that location, then everyone there is in great danger. You understand?”

  He nodded.

  “You must have had a prearranged signal to send if something went wrong, didn’t you?” I asked.

  He hesitated.

  “Gabriel is a killer. He will not let anyone get in his way. Every one of your friends is in danger.”

  “Everything is screwed—that’s the signal.”

  “What’s the e-mail address?”

  He looked at me. I could see in his eyes that some piece of him was still clinging to the eco-warrior image he had built for himself. Name, rank, and Sierra Club membership number only. Anything more than that and you were a traitor to the cause. No different from the lowliest oil company executive raping the planet.

  His eyes fixed on me, and I could see him dig his heels into what was left of his eroding world.

  “What if you’re lying to me?”

  “Your friends, and my daughter, may be dead already, but if they’re not, the only thing that may save them is what you do right now.”

  He looked down at his lap and the last of his resolve was expelled with a long, tired breath.

  “I need your password, and the e-mail address to send the message to.”

  He sat silently for a moment, and then the words slipped out of his mouth in the dull monotone of a witness naming names in front of a Senate committee.

  “Hldtplnetgr.”

  “Hold the planet green,” Harrison said.

  Eric nodded.

  Harrison sat down at the laptop and began logging on. The computer chimed and whistled and then connected to the ’net. The synthetic “welcome” had an eerie, menacing quality to it. Like an automated voice in a cockpit repeating “Pull up, pull up.”

  “What’s the e-mail address?”

  “Keptplnetgrn@znet.com.”

  Keep the planet green. Hold the planet green. Jesus. It had the sound of kids playing at being spies. Connecting it to real violence was unimaginable. Connecting my daughter to it was terrifying. How the hell had it gone so horribly wrong? How had Gabriel slipped into this? And why? What creates a person like that? How are we to understand a kind of thinking that is utter
ly foreign to us?

  Harrison entered in the e-mail address, and then typed the message: “Everything is screwed.”

  I glanced at Eric. “Anything else?”

  He shook his head. “Just that.”

  “How are they supposed to respond?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  I nodded to Harrison and he pressed send.

  “If they don’t answer—”

  He left the question hanging, as if not really wanting to finish it. I stared at the screen silently, trying to will an answer to our message. It was like the first night Lacy had ever stayed out well past the agreed time of her return. I had sat on the couch until three in the morning, staring out the window, waiting for her headlights to appear in the driveway. With each minute that passed, I created another scenario of disaster, another story of lost innocence. When she did return after three that morning, instead of telling her that I loved her and thought I had lost her, I told her that I knew too much about how horrible things can happen to people and that she was grounded. A brilliant piece of parenting. Push her away.

  I glanced at my watch and began marking the minutes since we sent the mail, the same way I had counted them that night waiting for Lacy. Four minutes passed, then five, six . . . seven . . . nine . . . ten.

  “How long—” Harrison stopped himself. “Never mind.”

  I turned from the computer and looked around the room. Eric was sitting slumped in the chair, his head hanging, eyes staring at the floor. He looked like a high-school kid who couldn’t believe that he had just lost the big game.

  I walked over and pulled up another folding chair in front of him.

  “Tell me about Lacy.”

  He looked up at me with either surprise or disbelief on his face. “What do you mean?”

  It was pathetic to have to ask a kid who helped kidnap my daughter who she was, but pride was the last thing I was worried about now. I wanted to know what she was passionate about, what she feared, loathed, dreamed. I wanted to know all the things I should, but didn’t because I had stopped paying attention. I wanted to know who my daughter was.

  “Why did she do this?” I asked.

  A slight smile appeared on his lips. “Oh, that . . . like how could my daughter do something so . . . yeah, right.”