Par Four, page 8
part #2 of Jake Hines Series
She went on for some time, explaining that she had been out of the office showing property– this was just such a busy time and there was only her and so many calls–and now when she finally had time to play the tape she found all these messages from Jake Hines–was it Hines or Haynes?–and she was just so very sorry. I was almost ready to start comforting her when she said, “Now, just tell me exactly what’s wrong with your bathtub…”
“Sink.” I said. “It’s the sink that’s leaking. But what’s more important is, the air conditioning quit working last night.”
“Oh, yes, well, I know about that! Another tenant in your building, well actually several others,” she tried an ironic little laugh that failed, “called me earlier. The repairman’s on his way for the air conditioning, rest assured! But now, you say your sink is stopped up…”
“Leaking. My kitchen sink is leaking. And the closet door won’t slide.”
“Okay. I’m writing all this down right now,” she said, as if writing things down were some heroic effort reserved for the most elite customers. “Is this the closet in the living room, Mr. Haynes?”
“In the bedroom. What’s your name?”
“Um. Tammy,” she said, reluctantly.
“Okay, Tammy, my name is Jake Hines.” I spelled it for her. “I’m a detective with the Rutherford Police Department.” I had lowered my voice a couple of notches and added all the gravity it would hold. “Will you try to remember my problems, please, Tammy, and take care of them for me as fast as you can?”
“Well, you bet I will, Mr. Hines.” Tammy said. She subtracted a little treacle from her voice, going more for sincere now. “I’ll get right on this today, and you can expect action, um, no later than close of business tomorrow.”
Wouldn’t that be good? Against all the evidence, I decided to believe her. I didn’t have time for a funk about household affairs. I have cases to clear, I thought urgently, many cases to clear!
I trotted up and down the hall, passing out case folders to Darrell and Rosie, Ray and Lou. Bo was out of his office, probably back out at the municipal golf course combing grass. I decided to leave him alone till he proved to himself there was no crack out there.
I looked at my watch. Ten-thirty. Why not run up to Rowdy’s and see what Babe had to say about her big weekend in June? I stuffed her deposit book in my briefcase and started toward the parking garage. On the way out of the building, though, I decided I’d ask Schultzy to send teletypes to some other towns, detailing these three high-yield burglaries I was curious about, and asking them to contact me if they’d seen burglaries with big losses behind good security systems. I wrote out the message, fished out my plastic key card, and let myself into the glass-enclosed dispatch room that’s the nerve center of the department.
Inside this bright fishbowl is a kinetic-feeling space where five or six people work intensely in near silence. The four main workstations face each other in a circle with a desk off to the side for the fire dispatcher, who cuts herself in and out of police traffic as the load requires. McCafferty used to put the walking wounded on dispatch, and let them answer phones and talk on the radio while their bones knit. But when the department went to computer-aided dispatch, the communications center became more sophisticated. Putting laptops in the squad cars added still another layer of complexity. Besides dealing with unforeseen emergencies fast, dispatchers have to be big-time geeks now. The messages that flash and scroll across their screens, guiding cops through the grit and commotion of their lively days and nights, are simultaneously copied to the records unit, becoming part of the immutable evidence that we constantly refer to, and eventually take to court if need be. The unsworn support people who work the dispatch desk have to be fast, accurate, highly literate and very cool.
Meaning it’s made to order for Marlys Schultz. She thrives in this job, which requires her to talk, type, read, and listen simultaneously. With the universe finally cranking along at her pace, she gets comfortable and happy, banging away on her keyboard at warp speed and barking out information like a big blond St. Bernard. Marlys was always an information junkie, and she loves telling cops what to do.
Cunningham was supervising the shift, his rimless glasses glittering in the indirect light. Schultzy was in the lead dispatch slot, enjoying a quiet gab with her desk mate, Neva Dudek, while they waited for the shift to heat up. No use just sitting quiet for three seconds.
“I mean, here I am with my arms full,” she was muttering across the little half-wall between them. Her screen lit up with a full page of details, she read it between one blink and the next, called car 2533 and shipped the page to his screen, heard his response, typed a couple more lines onto the page in front of her, and resumed her conversation while her eyes still scanned the screen. “And here’s Jessica screaming in my face, ‘I don’t wanna go to Granny Goose! You can’t make me go there!’ And I’m five minutes late, and Ernie starts picking her up and giving her this line about, ‘Now, Sweetheart, you know Mama’s not gonna make you stay no place if you’re not happy,’ and I’m saying, ‘Put her in the car, Ernie,’ because this is just standard Jessica horse manure, we’ve all spoiled her rotten and she thinks she should get her way every time!”
She paused to blow hair out of her eyes and I said quickly, “Schultzy, you got a minute?” She swiveled her chair slightly, showed me most of her profile, and said, “Hey, Jake. You gonna hang around in here now and pull rank on everybody?”
Schultzy’s a pal of mine. She was pleased when I got my promotion. She hates having her stories interrupted, though.
I leaned across her shoulder and laid my handwritten message in front of her. “Will you send this teletype for me? It should go to the investigative division in Austin and Red Wing and LaCrosse, and, let’s see, maybe Winona and Des Moines, for starts. Okay?” I started for the door.
“Well, now, hang on here, Loo-tenant! Not so fast, please! I can’t read this gobbledygook! What kinda hen-scratching is this? You better stick around and read this to me.”
Schultzy always pokes fun at my terrible handwriting, and today, delighted to have a brand-new lieutenant by the balls, she took time to give me grief about every word, entertaining the room at my expense. I was standing by her left shoulder, arguing about how to spell “Des Moines,” when Sally said, from the call desk, “Personal call for you, Schultzy.” Schultzy grabbed her outside phone absently, cupped it against her ear, said “Schultz,” and went right on typing. A woman’s voice said something in her ear. Suddenly, Schultzy’s strong white hands lay still on the keys.
“Whaddya mean, gone?” she said quietly. She lifted her right hand off the keyboard and set the tips of her fingers very gently against her lips. Her back had gone stiff. The voice in the phone was talking fast.
“Look in the street,” Schultzy said. “She’ll probably try to go home. Oh. Uh-huh. No place around there, huh? Listen, could you hold on a second?” She turned to Cunningham and said, “Jessie’s run away from day care. Okay if I send a squad over there to help look for her?”
“Hell, yes,” Tom said.
“Melanie, there’s gonna be a marked squad car there in a couple of minutes; you tell the officer everything you just told me, okay? He’ll help you look. Okay. Okay. Yeah, well, I better get on it, okay?” She banged the phone down, looking cross, and said, “Wants me to tell her it’s okay that she let my kid get away, Jeez Louise.”
“I thought your mother took care of Jessica,” I said. We had all heard plenty about Grandma Bjorncamp’s spanking theories.
“They were ragging on each other too much,” Schultzy said. “I decided to try a change.” Matt Coe answered her page. She fed details of Jessica’s hair and clothing and the address of the school onto the screen in front of her, shipping it to his screen while they talked. Coe said, “Copy,” and we heard his motor accelerate before his mike clicked off.
“Why don’t you go ahead and call Putratz?” Cunningham said, “To assist?”
“Really? That’s okay?” Schultzy asked.
“Sure, go ahead,” Tom Cunningham said. Ordinarily he’d wait, on a runaway. Dispatch has to be stingy with squad cars, because they’re spread pretty thin. Schultzy got Putratz on the radio and gave him the address, then called Coe and told him about his backup.
“Okay, I see the school now, Schultzy, listen,” Coe said, “I’m gonna make a quick sweep of the area before I go in, okay? Might get lucky here.”
His transmitter went dead. We hung over the blinking console, listening to traffic from other parts of town. Sally and Neva were taking all the other calls, so Schultzy could stick with Coe and Putratz. The news had spread outside the fishbowl, I saw; people working on the floor kept turning to look in through the glass walls of the dispatch area. Then Coe said, “Two-three to base,” and Schultzy said, “Base.”
“We didn’t find her when we circled the block,” Coe said, “so we’ll go on in now and see this Melanie, uh, Eisenman, that right?”
Schultzy said, “Eisenman, right.” Her face was losing color.
There was silence for a few seconds, then Sally took a call and told Schultzy, “Nguyen and Miller say they’ve finished their first set of drive-bys; want them to join the search team?” They both looked at Cunningham, who nodded, and Schultzy pressed her mike button and said, “Yes. Take Twelfth to Center and…” She set up an east-west grid for them to drive, on the streets above and below the nursery, her instructions scrolling across their screens as fast as she typed it in. When Stearns and then Donovan called in a few minutes later, she gave them a north-south pattern in the same area.
Sally answered an outside call, put it on hold and said, “Schultzy, there’s a person on this line–I can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman–that says they’ve got a girl named Jessica.”
Schultzy hit her phone button and croaked, “Schultz.” Standing behind her, I heard a falsetto voice talking high and fast. I couldn’t understand the words. Schultzy listened a minute, squinting in concentration. When the voice stopped she said, “What do you want?” A shrill giggle came over the line, and then a click and a dial tone.
Schultzy stared blankly into her screen.
“Some man with a weird voice said he’s got Jessica,” she said. “He didn’t seem to know I was her mother. He just said tell all the cops he’s got a little girl named Jessica Schultz downtown–that’s what he said, downtown–and he’ll decide pretty soon what he’s gonna do with her. I asked him what he wants, but he wouldn’t say. He just laughed and hung up. He’s got–he’s got the craziest voice…” She yanked the headset off her ears suddenly and flung it clattering across her keyboard. She raised her arms over her head in a groping gesture and then whirled and threw herself over the back of her chair, burying her head in her arms. A high-pitched wail began to come out of her, something like, “Ohmigodohmigodohmigod…” I tried to put my arms around her, but she pushed me away and went on keening.
Frank stuck his head in the door. Cunningham stepped over and spoke to him softly; Frank went away, but then came right back. Without a word, ignoring all of us, he walked directly to Marlys Schultz, pulled her upright by her shoulders, and slipped a brown paper bag over her head.
We were all shocked speechless. It seemed like such a brutal, insensitive thing to do. It worked, though. Schultzy quit yelling almost at once. Oddly, then, for a few seconds even the phones stopped ringing. In the sudden silence, a roomful of law enforcement professionals stared openmouthed at the distressed mother quivering under a grocery sack.
Frank watched the clock on the wall a few seconds, then leaned over and said softly, “Schultzy, can you hear me?” The bag nodded. “Listen, I know it’s hard. But I don’t have to tell you that the quicker we find Jessica the better her chances are. So I want you to calm down now and help us. Can you do that?”
There was a little sound, like a tiny grunt, and then the brown bag bobbed again, and Schultzy’s voice, muffled, said, “Mm-hmm,” and then, clearer, “Okay.”
Frank lifted the bag off her tousled head. Schultzy rubbed her face, blinked her eyes a couple of times, and whispered, “Thanks.”
“Let’s get to work,” Frank said.
The next hour was a blurry sweat. Frank told Cunningham to put everybody that wasn’t currently arresting somebody on the search. Cunningham got all but two squads from the day shift headed downtown, and Lulu started calling in off-duty people to help.
I called Sheriff Grant Hisey and requested a K-9 team. In Rutherford, the county keeps the dogs. Grant said he had two dogs trained and asked if we could use both.
“Sure appreciate it,” I said.
“Hey, their handlers need the practice,” Grant said. “Tell Schultzy not to worry. These puppies are pretty good. Be sure you have something for them to smell.”
I told Schultzy, “They need a piece of Jessica’s clothing. For the dogs.”
“Should be something at the school,” Schultzy said. “I’ll check right now.” Her color was improving. She was talking to squad cars, rattling off exact details of Jessica’s size, weight, hair color, and dress, typing perfect messages at breakneck speed. The faster she worked, the stronger she got. Between radio transmissions she made tensely controlled phone calls that collected her husband, Ernie, their other four children, and both sets of grandparents at her house. Once she got them there she bombarded them all with precise directions for the care and feeding of one another. I began to wonder if they might not all want to run away.
I went out to my section and found Kevin Evjan. Together, we mobilized the entire investigative force to walk the downtown skyways and subways that keep Rutherford citizens from freezing in the winter. I described the voice I had heard on the phone, and told them if they saw a man walking with a blond female child they should do something, anything, to get him to talk.
Bo Dooley walked in just then and said, “This could be somebody needing money for a fix, couldn’t it? Shall I talk to my snitches? They usually know who’s getting desperate.”
“I want you to do it,” I said, “but help with the downtown search first. I want to get over to that day-care center.”
Before I left, I asked Schultzy, “Did you find out about Jessica’s clothing?”
“Melanie found her extra sneakers in her locker. You going up there now, Jake?” Her face wanted to ask to come with me but knew better.
“Yeah.” I touched her shoulder. “I’ll be in touch.”
Granny Goose was swarming with cars. As fast as cops stopped circling the area and headed downtown, parents who’d heard the news began arriving, anxious and resentful, to take their children away. Melanie Eisenman looked frayed.
“I want you to know that nothing like this has ever happened at Granny Goose,” she said, “and I’m sick about it. But I want to go on record as stating that I did what I had to do under the circumstances. Jessica is a very difficult child…” She flared her slender nostrils.
“How did she get outside?”
“I put her in the laundry room for time out. It’s warm and clean in there and there’s plenty of light, so it’s safe but it’s boring. That’s why I use it. The children have to understand they’re being deprived of the company of their playmates for inappropriate behavior.”
“What did she do?”
“Smeared finger paint all over Timmy Grover,” Melanie said grimly. “It wasn’t an accident. She wanted his picture. When he wouldn’t hand it over she attacked him.”
“How’d she get out of the laundry room?”
“There’s one set of shelves–here, I’ll show you…” She led me to the laundry room, which was, indeed, a boring place. “In the closet, here, you see? Always full of clean towels. The shelves go clear through…” We walked out one door, in another, and she showed me how the shelves went through into the bathroom, so that clean towels could be pushed in one side and removed from the other. “Jessica climbed through, apparently. We found a stack of towels pushed onto the floor where she came out. Then, I guess she went out the bathroom door and down the hall and found the back door, here. She’s tall and strong for her age. I suppose she managed to push on the bar, see, and get out.” She showed me the panic hardware.
“Let’s go out.”
We were in a play yard filled with swings, a jungle gym, a big sandbox in one corner. A steel mesh fence, four feet high, ran around it, with a gate at the back.
“The gate was closed?”
“And padlocked. Always, when the children are here.” She showed me.
We were looking at the locked gate when the dog teams arrived, in a van. Two smiling deputies hopped out of the front seat, obviously eager to show their stuff. They gave their quivering dogs a good whiff of the sneakers. Melanie unlocked the gate and the deputies brought the dogs into the yard, where they went gleefully nuts. After running excitedly in circles for a while they bayed over to a spot in the rear corner and began lunging at the fence. Their handlers took them to the same spot on the outside, where they howled and jumped some more and then took off southbound along the sidewalk. Melanie and I trotted along, too intrigued to stay behind. Our chase only lasted half a block. In front of a red brick duplex with stone gateposts, the dogs plunged abruptly into the street and began baying in circles around an oil spot.
“Looks like she must’ve got into a car here,” the thin deputy said.
“You mind running them through it again?” I asked. I did not want Jessica in a car with the man with the high voice.
“Sure,” the K-9 guys said, their faces carefully neutral. “Good idea.” The dogs followed the scent again, willingly, ran to the same oil spot and howled in frustration. For the first time in my life I thought I understood how dogs felt.
“Are you looking for the little girl?” a voice said suddenly at my elbow. I turned and found a short round-cheeked woman pushing a twin stroller containing two round-cheeked, fussing babies.
“You saw a little girl?”
“A blond girl? About four or five?”
“Exactly! When did you see her?”
