Call Me Jane

by Ryan Maitland

  The picture was of a sweet looking girl with red hair, freckles, and pale skin. In the picture she’s smiling with her arms on some kind of platform with what looks like a painted background of a bookshelf. She looks like she’s, at most, five years old. It’s only later that I’ve come to learn that this was a typical school photo. My ignorance on the subject is thanks to my homeschool upbringing…

  “I haven’t,” I told the man. “Is she in trouble?” I asked, growing concerned.

  “She’s been missing since this morning,” he told me, brows furrowing.

  “Let me call the owner; maybe she’s seen her,” I told him before calling Anne on my phone.

  “Anne,” I say into the phone, “there’s a deputy here looking for a missing girl. Can you please come to the front?”

  “I’m on my way,” she tells me curtly before disconnecting.

  I let the deputy know she’s on her way and sit anxiously trying not to stare at him. It takes Anne less than a minute to come to the register. The deputy shows her the photo and Anne gasps quietly.

  “Jessie’s in trouble?” Anne asks, shock bright on her face.

  “She’s been missing since this morning,” the deputy answers. “Have you seen her?”

  “Not since she and her mother came to the store a couple weeks ago,” Anne answered. The deputy looks crestfallen as he takes the phone back and turns towards the customers to ask if anyone has seen the missing girl.

  “I’d like to help,” I tell him before he takes more than a step away. “Is there a search team or something?”

  “There is,” he smiles, contorting his bushy mustache. “Any volunteer should report to the sheriff’s office for their search area.”

  “Thank you,” I tell him, my thoughts only on the girl.

  I turn to Anne, who is giving me an odd look.

  “What?” I asked her.

  “The last time I saw you so intense was when you wouldn’t let go of that ugly bear,” she answered.

  “Mr. Fluffybutt is not ugly!” I nearly snarl at her. “He’s beautiful… in his own way…”

  “What I meant was,” Anne rebuffed, rolling her eyes, “you seem awfully concerned over a girl you’ve never met.”

  “Let’s just say I know what it’s like to be scared and alone and wishing somebody would come rescue you…” I tell her, my voice going tight and quiet with despair.

  It was then that I made a decision… one that would cause me a fair bit of grief, later on, but also one that likely saved that girl’s life…

  “Anne,” I say, my voice going to a soft whisper, “I have something to tell you, but you have to keep it a secret. Can you do that?”

  “What kind of secret?” Anne asked, her voice dripping with suspicion.

  “Nothing illegal,” I tell her quickly. “It’s personal; something I can do. It can save this girl, but nobody else can know about it.”

  “Jane, if you have information about the girl, you need to tell the police,” Anne scolded, sounding angry.

  “It’s not like that!” I snap. “I have… I can…” I stumble, tripping over what it is I want to tell her. “I’m psychic…”

  Anne snorted, rolling her eyes and turning away. I grab her arm, temptation urging me to show her directly what I can do, with only caution holding me back.

  “I’m serious,” I tell her, conviction ringing in my voice. “If I have something of the girl’s, I can find her, talk to her. I wouldn’t involve you, but you know the girl and her family. You can get me what I need to do my little freakshow trick without drawing suspicion better than I can.”

  “And why should I believe you?” Anne asked me, a note of warning in her voice. She clearly did not believe me and thought I was playing some kind of trick on her.

  “Because temps are dropping,” I tell her bluntly. “There’s a frost warning for tonight. If we don’t find her before it gets dark, she will freeze! I can find her faster than anyone else. If you can get me something personal, something she carries around or some dirty clothing or something, then I can connect with her, retrace her steps, and find her! So, will you help me help her?”

  “You’re really serious, aren’t you?” she asked, looking a little dumfounded. “You really believe you can do this?”

  “I know I can,” I tell her, putting as much conviction as I can into my voice.

  “All right,” Anne decided. “I’ll do it, but not because I believe you, but because Beth seems to think you’re something special. Beth believes a lot of strange things but she’s generally a good judge of character. It’s enough to make me give you the benefit of the doubt this time, but I warn you, if you’re playing some kind of game, I will personally run you out of town. You understand me?”

  “I do,” I tell her without hesitation. “I can do what I say I can. I can find the girl.”

  “Then let’s get going,” she replies, turning to the store and shouting, “We’re closing early! There’s a missing girl and we’re going to go help find her! I apologize for the inconvenience!”

  Once the store was cleared, Anne locked up and ushered me into her car, a large SUV she uses to carry some of the larger items she bought on her shopping trips. We drove deeper into town, turning off into the residential areas before stopping at a small house.

  “Wait here,” she commanded before getting out and heading to the front door. My guess is that this was Jessie’s home. I watched as Anne talked to a woman that looked to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Her eyes were full of unshed tears and she jumped at every sound. The woman disappeared into the house before returning a moment later with a pajama top with a strange blue dog on the front. Anne took it and seemed to thank the woman before she returned to the car.

  “I told her the police wanted this for the bloodhounds they were bringing in,” Anne told me, thrusting the small shirt at me.

  “I’ve been called worse,” I told her, distractedly, as I took the shirt, extending my senses to test the connection. The connection was good, so I looked through Jessie’s eyes, seeing nothing but a dark tunnel with a light at the end of it.

  “I’m connected,” I told Anne somewhat distantly, dividing my attention between my own body and that of Jessie’s. “She’s in some kind of small tunnel. It’s damp. There’s maybe an inch of water at the bottom. It stinks. I can see a light at the end of it, though… I think she’s caught on something…”

  “Sounds like it might be a drainage tube,” Anne remarked, her voice still skeptical. “Any idea where this tube is?”

  “I’ll ask,” I answered quietly. I put more power into what I was getting and started prodding. “How did I ever get into this mess?” I asked Jessie quietly enough that she should think it was her own inner monologue.

  My head was immediately flooded with memories. Jessie had been playing in the park. She had seen a cat and ran after it, paying no heed to her babysitter who was supposed to be watching her. The cat ran away and Jessie followed, but soon lost sight of the cat. Jessie started searching for it, but fell down a ditch. At the bottom of the ditch was a drainage tube. Jessie thought the cat might have gone in there, so she crawled in after it. She crawled to the other end of the tube without finding the cat. It was around here that she gave up on the cat and tried to get back to the park, except now she was lost. She tried climbing out of the ditch the tube was in, but the sides were too steep for her. She tried going down the next tube, but her coat got snagged on something and now she was stuck…

  She was scared, alone, and was starting to cry…

  “There’s a park her babysitter took her to,” I told Anne. “There’s a sandbox with some yellow excavator type things…” I added, uncertain about the terms.

  “I know the park,” Anne told me, putting the car into gear. We drove for just a couple minutes, still within walking distance of the house, for most people anyway, before stopping at a playground now busy with adults far too old to play in it.

  “I recognize the wooded a
rea,” I told Anne, getting out. Anne followed me as I made my way through the maze of people, only half-seeing them. I could feel Jessie’s fear crescendo, so I started humming Freres Jacques under my breath, but plenty loud enough for Jessie to hear. It was a favorite lullaby for Peter and Wendy and it often helped soothe me as well.

  Now at the edge of the wooded area, I looked around, trying to review where Jessie had seen the cat run off to. Not recognizing anything right away, I started wandering into the wilder area ringing the small playground. I came out the other side and saw a drainage ditch with a spot that looks to have been disturbed, the sod having slipped off to reveal brick red mud underneath.

  “This is where she slipped into the ditch,” I told Anne, somewhat dazedly. Jessie was still stuck, but calmer now. She was even humming Freres Jacques to herself.

  “I’m not going to go crawling through there,” Anne stated in no uncertain terms.

  In answer, I walked along the side of the road in the direction that I think Jessie had gone, choosing the tunnel entrance closest to the slippery mud I had spotted. The top of the drainage tube was covered in soil and sod along with mailboxes and sidewalks. It was part of an irrigation system designed to prevent flash floods, which sometimes happened in these parts, as storms poured water faster than the ground could absorb it. The middle of the roads were slightly elevated, while the sides were slightly lower, directing the water to the ditches and drainage tunnels, forming temporary creeks while the storms raged on.

  After maybe a hundred feet, the sidewalk gave way to another ditch and another drainage pipe. If I had chosen the right direction, then this pipe is the one Jessie was stuck in, but if I was wrong, then we’d have to retrace our steps in the other direction.

  “Do you have a flashlight?” I asked Anne, kicking myself for not asking earlier.

  Anne dug into her purse and pulled out a compact metal flashlight with a bright green button on the end. I pumped the button and a beam brighter than I had expected flashed out, nearly blinding me.

  Not wasting any more time, I jumped into the ditch and shined the light down the pipe. I could hear a faint humming, like that from a small girl that had learned a new tune and was using it to stay calm.

  “The beam is adjustable,” Anne called down as I tried shining the light down the pipe. “Pull on the end to tighten the beam,” Anne clarified.

  I did as ordered, restricting the beam and intensifying the light to reveal the backside of a little girl in a red coat and pink pants!

  “Jessie!” I called down the pipe. “I see you and I’m going to get you out, okay?”

  “Okay,” came the scared, but somewhat relieved voice of a girl echoing down the pipe.

  “I see her!” I called to Anne. “She’s snagged on something. I’m going to go in and get her!”

  “I’ll call the sheriff,” Anne called back. “Tell her to call off the search.”

  The pipe was narrow, but large enough for me to squeeze into crawling on my hands and knees. My clothes would be ruined, but it seemed a small price to pay to bring this girl back safely. I held the light in one hand as I made my way inside.

  This may be the one and only time I was grateful for being so skinny…

  “Freres Jacques, Freres Jacques,” I sang, trying to calm the girl who was too far down the pipe for my liking. I ended up singing the song at least three times before I got to her. Her pink pants had snagged on a protruding root that had found a small fissure in the metal pipe and expanded it as the root grew thicker. I untangled the girl from the root and told her to start crawling backwards. The girl obeyed without question and we slowly made our way back out the other end.

  I picked up little Jessie and handed her to Anne, who had bent down to receive the girl before handing her off to the mother.

  Anne reached down and helped me out of the ditch a moment later.

  And that’s when I was arrested…

  Chapter 18

  Sheriff Carter

  Sheriff Carter was a big bear of a woman. Standing well over six feet tall, she could have easily been mistaken for a professional weight-lifter as her muscles heavily strained her tan uniform. She kept her dark brown, almost black, hair in a tight bun at the back of her head, presumably to keep anyone stupid enough to actually fight her from pulling her hair. Her face was one that has seen more fights than it had a right to, with a crooked nose that was slightly flattened, and a faint line of a scar on her lower lip.

  It was sheriff Carter that slapped the cuffs rather painfully on my wrists, twisting my hands behind me, as she read me my rights and shoved me into the back of her patrol car in front of what must have been everyone in the small tourist town.

  I winced a little, knowing my arms and wrists would have tender bruises by tomorrow morning…

  I could hear Anne arguing with both the sheriff and the deputy, though what she was shouting, I can’t really say. I was in shock and my memory gets hazy as one of my worst fears was being realized. Part of my mind screamed that I was going to be sent back to Jack and Billi and all the lovely luxuries, such as a clean bed, cooked food, and privacy would all be torn away from me all because I had the audacity to help out a lost little girl…

  It was the insistent knocking on the car window that got me out of my daze. “I’m going to meet you at the station,” Anne called to me, worry evident on her face. “You’re going to be fine. We’re going to get this straightened out. I promise!”

  I don’t remember if I responded, but I guess I must have as Anne gave me an encouraging smile before getting back into her SUV.

  Interesting fact about police cars for you, that I discovered that day. The back seats of these cars are special-made for police cars. They’re molded with an indentation so that the hands and arms of a handcuffed prisoner aren’t pressed into their back. This meant that blood-loss to my arms, wrists, and hands was not an issue during the short trip to the small station. Small mercies I guess…

  By the time sheriff Carter was pulling me out of the car and into the building, I had recovered, a bit, from my initial shock, so I was more aware of what was going on. Sheriff Carter almost threw me into a chair she had pulled next to a desk that I soon realized was hers.

  “What are the charges?” I asked, thinking back to all the procedurals I had watched through Tommy’s eyes.

  “We’re going to start with kidnapping and wrongful imprisonment,” sheriff Carter told me, starting in on some forms.

  “Kidnapping?” I asked, dumfounded. “Who do you think I kidnapped?”

  “Don’t play stupid with me,” she warned, glaring at me.

  “Who’s playing?” I shrieked, starting to panic. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Don’t say another word, Jane!” Anne warned, storming into the small office.

  Anne turned to the sheriff, pointing her finger at her threateningly in a way I wouldn’t have dared. “You have no right to do this!” she shouted, spittle nearly flying out of her mouth!

  I’ve never seen Anne so angry, and I’ve seen her after I ‘accidentally’ broke a small vase that brought feelings of terror, guilt, and despair. I don’t know the history of that piece, but it must have been bad to have conjured up those images. I ended up paying for the vase, but the most I got was a fairly light scolding from Anne, at least compared to this!

  “I don’t take kindly to people kidnapping children,” sheriff Carter ground out, menacingly, “so that they can ‘rescue’ them later for fame and glory.”

  “I don’t want to be famous!” I shouted at the sheriff. “I don’t want my photo taken. I don’t even want you to tell the mother about me!”

  The sheriff considered me critically, perhaps judging whether I was telling the truth or not. Anne, meanwhile, looked to be considering my statement in light of what she had seen me do. Maybe she figured that with my gifts, if I had wanted to be famous, I could have already done so. Anne also knew that I was an emancipated minor, so she might have
suspected why I didn’t want any publicity.

  I never talked to her about my upbringing, but after what I had told her about sympathizing with a girl that was frightened and alone and wishing someone would come rescue her, she might have connected a few dots.

  “Look, sheriff,” Anne broke in after giving me a considering look. “What time did the girl go missing?”

  “Around ten this morning,” the sheriff answered.

  “There you have it!” Anne shouted, pounding the desk with her fist in triumph. “Jane was manning the register during that time! Jane, did you have any customers during that time?”

  “A few,” I answered, thinking back. “A lady bought a wooden box and a man bought that stuffed deer head that you’ve been trying to get rid of.”

  “Did anyone use a credit card?” Anne asked, smiling.

  “Yes,” I answered, seeing where she was going with this. “Both of them!”

  “Then Jane couldn’t have kidnapped the girl!” Anne rounded on the sheriff. “I’ll get you the receipts to prove it!”

  “Why did you think I kidnapped her?” I asked the sheriff, still upset at being punished for doing a good deed.

  “Because,” Carter said, almost gritting her teeth, “within an hour of my deputy telling you about the missing girl, you were pulling her out of that pipe. As near as I can figure, you must have gone straight to the girl in an area that had already been searched. How did you know to search that area unless you kidnapped the girl and held her captive in the pipe so you could play the hero?”

  “I heard singing,” I told the sheriff.

  “We heard crying,” Anne told the sheriff at the same time, the two of us talking over each other.

  “There!” sheriff Carter declared triumphantly. “You can’t even keep your stories straight!”

  I gave a sigh that was half resignation, half growl at the frustration I was feeling at this mess.

  “Care to try again?” sheriff Carter taunted.