November Rain

by Donald Harstad

  “Anybody other than Martin?” I gave Jane another glance. She was angry, but I could tell she wasn’t about to break the line of questioning.

  “Oh . . . well, I’ve heard, mind you, that she was interested in others. Even at her school,” she said.

  “Really?” That did surprise me a little.

  “Oh, yes. She was here with a professor somebody, oh, weeks ago, it was. And it didn’t look as if they were discussing courses.” She glanced around, and nodded at me. “Mind you, he did ask me. I don’t go spreading gossip.”

  “I’m sure you don’t. Did you get his name?”

  “No.”

  I was afraid she was going to clam up after her disclaimer. “What did he look like? I really do need to know, so I can talk to him, too. Maybe he saw somebody hanging about before, somebody he isn’t connecting with this disappearance.”

  “It’s hard to remember.”

  Now, I don’t know the British at all. So I didn’t know if she was hinting at a little cash transaction, or if she was just being reluctant. I gave her the benefit of the doubt. “I’d really appreciate it if you could think back . . .” Nobody would forget what he looked like if she’d brought it up in the first place. I figured people all over were at least similar in that respect.

  She came through. “Oh, tall, dark. Maybe forty, or a bit. A slender man. Tanned, which makes me think he was posh. Well dressed . . . not a proper suit of clothes, but expensive slacks and a polo shirt. Lovely white teeth.”

  And it didn’t cost me a cent. Or a pence.

  I looked directly at Jane and Vicky. “You two thinking of anybody?”

  “No.” The way Jane said that, I was real sure she just didn’t want to say so in front of Mary.

  “Well, Mary,” I said, “thank you. You’ve been very helpful, and I’m sure you’re anxious to get back to work.”

  “You’re quite welcome,” she said, primly. “And one other thing.” She stood, and straightened her apron. “He came in one of those silver grey cars . . . Aston Martin, perhaps. Very becoming.”

  “No shit?” Carson decided to contribute. “A Vanquish?”

  “Quite similar,” said Mary.

  “Holy shit! Carl, those things cost about a quarter of a million!”

  “Oh, no,” said Mary. “More like 130,000.” Obviously a girl after Carson’s heart.

  Carson thought for a second. “You’re talking pounds sterling. I’m talking dollars.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Then you’d be quite close, wouldn’t you?”

  A teacher? A professor? I looked at the girls. Jane had an eyebrow way, way up. That was a sure sign of something being out of sorts. Then I looked a bit harder at Mary, and caught a hint. I gave her my broadest, friendliest smile.

  “Or, maybe not an Aston Martin, right? Maybe a Honda?”

  Mary smiled back. “Quite likely. I don’t know that much about cars, at all.”

  “You knew the price range of an Aston Martin,” said Carson.

  “I browse the net,” she said. “And I do know about the exchange rate.”

  I laughed. “Excellent. Very nice, indeed. But it was silver grey, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything else you’d like to share?” I was having fun, and I guess it showed.

  “A word to the wise, of sorts,” she said. “The press are much more concerned with her sex life than they are with her having gone missing. They say some very rude things. I don’t know about the US papers, but ours here can sometimes be very rude indeed.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.” She and I shook hands. “If you think of anything else. . . .” I always ask that. So does every other cop I know. It’s almost as routine as talking about the weather.

  “I’ll let you know,” she said.

  Just like talking about the weather.

  Chapter 10

  Washington, DC

  Excerpt from the Intelligence Briefing entitled:“Task, Collect, Process and Use”

  April 19, 2002

  The problem with the lag time between the terrorists deciding to do something and actually getting it done can cause much confusion among western agencies. If, for example, a terrorist response is being anticipated to a particular event, there may be a bombing in an unanticipated location that seems to be that reaction. In fact, it is very likely that the bombing could be a response to some completely different event that occurred years ago. We call this a disconnect between adversaries, and it’s caused by those adversaries operating in two completely different worlds. We’re computer aided and any exchanges of data or voice communications that are not real time are considered obsolete. We sometimes, if you will, think too fast for our own good.

  Wednesday, November 12, 2003

  20:03 Greenwich Mean Time

  Carson and I accompanied Jane and Vicky to their flat, and stayed for a cup of coffee. For a house-sitting job, it was a pretty nice place. Each of the girls had their own room, and the kitchen was very nice.

  “I got the impression back at the pub,” I said, “that you two knew who Mary was referring to when she talked about the cool dude with the car.”

  “Okay,” said Jane. “Look, I didn’t get it from Emma firsthand, but Vicky did.”

  “It was probably Professor Latham. Edward.” She looked a little embarrassed. “It wasn’t like she was getting bad grades or anything. Really. She just thought he was pretty hot. She saw him a few times. I don’t know how far things got.”

  “Best guess?” I asked.

  “Oh, hell, she probably slept with him,” she said. “She would. I mean, it’s the way she thinks. Short relationships . . .”

  “I can live with that,” I said. “No problem.”

  “Wouldn’t that be really sorta dumb, though?” asked Carson. “I mean, like she’d have to break up with her professor before the course was over. Shit, I think that’d have to have a really bad effect on the old GPA.”

  “To be honest about it,” said Jane, “I don’t think Professor Latham was exactly looking for a lifelong partner, either.”

  I cleared my throat. “But he does drive a silver or silver grey car, right? Super expensive or not?”

  “Yeah, Dad, and it’s a Honda.”

  “More in keeping with his means?”

  “Yeah, I think so. I don’t know what he makes, but it should be fairly good money. . . .” She looked at Vicky. “You have any idea how much professors make over here?”

  “No. Enough, though.”

  I asked to see Emma’s room, and Jane took me to it. I looked around in it without touching anything. I mean, we didn’t know for certain she was dead, and I didn’t feel I had the right to snoop. What I was looking for, mainly, was stuff like photos, mementos, things like that. Something, or anything, that might give me a direction. The only photograph was on her desk. It showed her, her mother, Janine, her late father, Harrison, and her baby sister Monica in better times. I hardly knew Monica, who’d been sort of an afterthought, and was about sixteen now. I didn’t think that there would be much confiding done between sisters who were fifteen or sixteen years apart, and Jane had confirmed that.

  Jane told me that Emma might have had a diary, but she’d never seen it.

  “I know she had one in high school, and college.”

  I really wanted to know if she had kept a diary. It was tempting to look for it, but I was stopped by the fact, once again, that Emma was not known to be dead or injured, or in any way threatened. She could conceivably walk in at any time.

  Well, I thought that for a few minutes. Then Vicky yelled from the living room.

  “Get in here, everybody! Quick, ohmygod!”

  We got there in time to see Emma’s face on the tube. She was between two masked figures, apparently both male. She was bound at the wrists, her hair was pretty well messed up, and she had a swelling on her lip. Otherwise, as they say, she looked fine. Her head moved from side to side, as if she was addressing the two standing alongside her. The
n she looked straight at the camera. She was moving her lips, but there was no audio.

  The voice-over from Sky News said, “There is no audio to go with this tape, but the printed note we received stated that the missing American girl Emma Schiller was in good health, and that there would be more tapes to come, outlining demands.”

  The camera that had been focused fairly close on Emma backed off a little, and I could see part of a banner in the background. There was something written there, and it looked like some sort of Arabic script.

  We all just stood there, as they re-ran the tape. Jane said, “Oh shit,” once or twice, but that was it. We just watched.

  The beginning of the tape had a newspaper spread out in front of the camera. It was the London Times, but the quality was so bad I couldn’t make out the date.

  “The headline,” said the commentator, “is from the Times front page for twenty-ninth October, so it is a strong indication that the now understood to be kidnapped woman was alive and in this condition on that date.”

  Okay. So?

  “That would be the day after she went missing, so the theory that some have had regarding her being off on a lark is fairly refuted. We will continue to await further developments, and have been told that there would be a comment from New Scotland Yard soon. While we wait, let us chat with. . . .”

  Pundit time. Fill didn’t interest me at that moment.

  “Okay,” I said. “This is good. We know what’s happened to her now.”

  “Shh! Dad . . . ,” said Jane.

  I used the three minutes of blather from the tube to collect my thoughts, and to get ready to answer their questions as soon as they went to commercial.

  All too soon, there was a shot of some young girl walking briskly down a street, with “Unsquare Dance” by the Dave Brubeck Quartet playing in the background. Vicky hit the mute.

  “She looks so scared . . .” “Did you see her lips?” “She looked okay to me . . .” were all spoken pretty much simultaneously.

  “She’s alive,” I said. “That’s the good news.”

  “But, Dad, Jesus, look who’s got her, why did they pick her. . . ?”

  “Well, we don’t know for sure just who they are. . .” You gotta try.

  “Their terrorists, Dad! What else could they be?”

  “Yeah. But it gives us all a chance to find her,” I said, quickly. “Scotland Yard is very good at this sort of thing. So long as she’s alive, there’s a chance.” Assuming that she was. That tape was pretty old.

  “But, Dad, damn it all, they never get these hostages back!” Jane was very near tears.

  “Sometimes they do . . . There haven’t even been demands yet, as far as we know. . . .”

  For what may have been the first time in my life, the commercials were over too soon, and we were back live. Not for news of Emma, but for news that might be about her. President Bush was due in the UK in a few days, and there was immediate speculation that Emma might be being held hostage in order to coerce him to do something while in the UK.

  “Do you have any speculation on that, Robert,” asked the commentator.

  Whoever “Robert” was, I thought he was a little obnoxious. “One could hope for a demand to withdraw from Iraq altogether,” he said. “Not that the current American administration would pay the slightest bit of attention. But it would explain the acquisition of an American woman.”

  “Acquisition?” It just came out. I couldn’t help it. “Christ, it sounds like they just filled out a request for a volunteer.”

  “Dad. . . .”

  On the TV, a woman named “Edith,” chimed in. “Robert, I’ve been watching the tapes in the booth, and the technicians say they think it’s a copy of a copy . . . What do you make of that?”

  “It’s so difficult to say, Edith. But I’ve taken advantage of the opportunity of the break to think about this. She’s a student. The tape is of poor quality, certainly not professional. Perhaps, the photographer, too, is a student? Could we be dealing with some staged effort, here? Perhaps a cooperative effort to convince President George Bush of the error of his ways? I suppose we could only hope,” and he smiled.

  Even in the worst days of US television, I’d never seen something politicized quite so fast. I was certain we’d get nothing but blather for quite a while, now.

  “Mute it,” I said. “We need facts, and they don’t have any.”

  Vicky did, but she was reluctant.

  “We know it isn’t a fucking prank,” I said. “Pardon my language.”

  “No problem,” said Vicky.

  “We gotta call home,” I said. “It’s probably already on CNN, or it will be shortly. What time is it in Iowa?”

  “About 2:30 PM,” said Jane. “We need to call Janine. I don’t want her to hear about her daughter from the media. . . .”

  “Use your cell phone,” I said. “In case Scotland Yard wants to call us about anything.”

  She did. She and Vicky called Janine Schiller’s number four times, getting a busy signal each time.

  The land line phone rang. Vicky answered, and started to break down immediately. It was her mother. They only talked for a few seconds, and then Vicky was able to get out that she’d call on her cell phone, to free up the line.

  She’d just hung up when it rang again. It was Sue, calling to talk with Jane. Jane started to cry, too, but got her composure back very quickly. “Let me call on my cell, Mom, we have to keep this line open.”

  I sure hoped like hell that New Scotland Yard would call.

  Carson, in the meantime, handed me his cell phone. “You want to call your office?”

  I used our unlisted number. I got Sally, who sounded extremely stressed.

  “Holy shit, you can’t believe it,” she said. “We’ve got both dispatchers and both secretaries on the phone, and the other lines are still ringing. The media is going nuts.”

  “I need to talk with Lamar.”

  “Okay, you must have seen the tapes, then?”

  “Yeah. You get tape with sound over there?”

  “No . . . Lamar . . . Lamar, it’s Carl . . . Line twelve . . . Stay on the line after you’re done,” said Sally, before Lamar picked up. “I got some stuff . . .”

  “Carl?”

  “Yeah, boss. Zoo over there?”

  “NO! What the hell ya think?”

  “We don’t have anything you don’t, I guess,” I said. “We did some interviews today, but we didn’t know about this tape thing until a few minutes ago.”

  “You guys call Janine yet?”

  “We can’t get through,” I said.

  “I’ll get somebody up there, tell her to either stop talking to the media, or to put her phone back on the hook, and then call you. Where you at?”

  “The girl’s apartment. She’s got the number.”

  “Whatta ya think? Terrorists? She still alive?”

  “Not now,” I said.

  “Can’t talk now?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Very likely.” I didn’t want to add anything negative to the conversations going on all around me.

  “Yeah. Chances of getting her back alive ain’t so good.”

  “You got that right,” I said, with feeling.

  “Okay, do what you can. Scotland Yard cooperating?”

  “Doin’ just what I’d do in their place,” I said, truthfully.

  He paused, digesting that. “Well, don’t let that stop ya,” he said.

  “No, I won’t.”

  “What? Okay, hey, Sally’s got something for you. Be good.”

  Sally was back on the line. “We got a call from the F.B.I. about thirty seconds before you called,” she said. “They wanted some info, and said that you were the one to talk to, and then I told ’em that you were in London. They were real fuckin’ surprised,” she said, with some joy. “I gave ’em your address, and they want to have one of their people over there contact you.”

  “Okay. Which address did you give ’em?”


  “Your hotel.”

  “Cool.”

  “What’s going on, can you say?”

  “Sally, if I knew anything, I’d be only too happy to tell you.”

  It wasn’t five minutes after I talked with Lamar that we received a phone call from Janine Schiller. Jane answered the call. She and Vicky kept passing the phone from one to the other, as they would begin to lose it and manage to pass it to the other before starting to cry.

  Then it was my turn to talk.

  Janine seemed pretty composed, all things considered. We just discussed what the two of us knew, mostly from watching TV. I’d known Janine and her late husband, and we’d always been on good terms.

  “Carl, I’m just so glad you’re over there right now. It means so much to us.” I could imagine the scene at her house, with sisters, brothers and cousins coming in.

  “I’ll do what I can, Janine,” I said. “We’ve had a good meeting with Scotland Yard earlier, and they’re working hard on this one.”

  “Help them, though,” she said. “Promise you won’t let them drop the ball.”

  “They won’t do that, Janine, I’m sure.” I couldn’t imagine the British doing anything other than work this case with all they had available.

  “Just promise us that you’ll be there, too,” she said.

  “Sure. You bet,” I answered. What can you say at a time like that? It sure wasn’t the proper moment to go into jurisdictional things, or to tell her that I’d just be a spectator in the whole thing.

  “And the County Attorney? I understand he’s there, too?”

  “Carson Hilgenberg,” I said. “Yes, he is.”

  “That must be a great help,” she said.

  “It is.”

  “Would I be able to speak with him?”

  “You bet, Janine, he’s right here,” I said, handing the phone to Carson. “It’s Mrs. Schiller.”

  Carson took the phone, greeted Janine, and then started nodding. “Yes, ma’am, Mrs. Schiller,” he said. “Yes, yes, we will.”