Par Four, page 9
part #2 of Jake Hines Series
“A couple of hours ago…give or take. I was on my way to the Valu Mart on the highway. I came past this yard and she was standing inside the fence all alone. When she saw me she said, ‘Will you lift me out?’ and I said, ‘Well, honey, I don’t know whether you’re supposed to be out of there or not.’ She said, ‘Well, I just wanna go home,’ and I said, ‘You better go inside the school there and ask somebody if you should be out.’ She looked real disappointed. After I went on I thought, heck, I bet I should have gone in there to the school and told them one of their kids was in the yard trying to get out. But I had shopping to do and with these twins I have to hustle to stay on schedule. In fact as you can see I’m a little behind right now; I better get ‘em home.” She gave me her name and address while she rocked the unhappy babies with her foot.
“You didn’t see a man hanging around here, did you?” I asked her.
“No. A man? What kind of a man?”
“Don’t know. Probably in a car.”
“No, I’d never of left her if I thought–She’s missing, huh? Son of a gun. Now I feel real bad. Jeez, listen, I’m sorry but I’ve really gotta get these kids home.” Her babies were beginning to sound like the dogs.
“Sure,” I said, “Thanks a lot.”
I called the station and brought Frank up to date. “Anything new there?”
“Everybody’s searching downtown. No leads yet,” he said. “But listen, Maddox is walking the North End today and I’ve started him talking to people. He just got a tip about a place to look. Why don’t you run up there and see what you think? Hold on, I’ll find him…” I heard many voices, the rattle of the radio, and then Frank said, “He’ll meet you in front of the pawn shop there on Eleventh.”
I went north on Center Street, hit the lights just right and in eight minutes pulled up in front of Clint Maddox, who was standing at parade rest in front of the Kwik Kash Pawn Shop. A dozen young males crowded around him.
I leaned across to open the passenger’s side door and he slid in beside me. “Boy, you make friends fast,” I said.
“I’m the new girl in town,” Maddox said. “Some of these kids have never seen a lone cop on foot before. They’re all dyin’ to know what in hell I’m doin’ up here.” He smiled. “What am I doing, Jake? You got any idea?”
“Taking the neighborhood back,” I said.
“All by myself?”
“Frank said he’d try to get you a partner soon. Listen, you heard about Schultzy’s little girl?”
“Yeah. Poor Schultzy, I bet she’s goin’ nuts, huh? I’ll tell you one thing, though, whoever took that Jessica, I bet he’s having a long day.”
“You know her?”
“She used to play with my girls sometimes on Saturday. We had to cut it out. My kids always ended up crying. Jeez, I feel sorry for Schultzy, though. You got anything on the snatcher?”
“Just that he talks like Mickey Mouse and won’t say what he wants. And he said he was holding her downtown. But Frank said you had another idea?”
“It may be nothing but…a couple of people have said to me in the last few minutes that a man went into the house with the broken porch railing on Fifth Avenue, and he had a little girl with him.”
“You found it yet?”
“No. Wanna go look?”
“Sure.” We drove east. “You don’t have an address?”
“Between Fifteenth and Sixteenth Streets, they said.”
Half the houses in the block had serious maintenance problems, and straggly ill-kept lawns. There were three porches in various stages of decay. We drove the area twice, then parked the car and started walking. As we passed a house set close to the sidewalk, a voice asked softly from inside a window, “You lookin’ for the dope house, Jake?”
I peered through the screen. “Tony?” He was sitting just inside the open window, in a sleeveless undershirt. He had a cup of coffee on the windowsill, and a lighted cigarette on the stand ashtray beside him. “This is Clint Maddox, Tony, he’s working in this part of town now. You think there’s something funny about one of these houses?”
“Fifteen Ten,” he said. “Other side of the street, two doors down. See it? The one with the spokes broke out of the porch railing.”
“Uh-huh, I see it. What do you know about it? Loud noise, big parties at night?”
“Not noise. People. All kinds of people in cars. Some nice cars, some rattletraps. And all ages, not like you’d see in a club or anything. Starts about four in the afternoon, pretty much every day, goes on till midnight, later on weekends. They drive up, they go inside, they stay a few minutes and they leave.”
“So, buying something, you figure.”
“And plus, Jake, nobody really lives there. No car there in the morning, no lights on till evening.”
“Grass looks recently cut.” I said.
“Some lawn service comes a couple times a month. Talk to Pete. His house is on Sixth; his back yard’s right across the alley from the back yard of that Fifteen Ten there. He says the same thing: people in and out all night long.”
“You seen anybody go in there today?”
“Huh-uh. Still too early. You gonna go in and take a look, Jake?”
“Having a lot of company’s not illegal,” I said. “We need a little more than that to go on. But somebody said a man and a little girl went in there. You didn’t see that, huh?”
“No. But I’m pretty sure Pete’s home. You wanna walk around in the alley there, he’ll show you which yard it is.”
“Uh-huh. Maybe we’ll do that.”
“Nice to meet you, young fella.”
“Clint,” Maddox said. “Glad to know you.” As we walked away, Clint said, “Whaddya think, shall we take a look in back?”
“Why not? Let’s get the car.” We idled north on the alley between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, counting back yards.
“Fifteen-oh-six, oh-eight…There it is,” Clint said. “The one with the tan hatchback parked by the path.” The house was in serious disrepair, with cracked siding and peeling paint. A screened porch ran across the back of the house, its rusty screen sagging above dilapidated steps. A path ran through the weedy yard from the alley to the porch. No lights showed in the house.
“Look under the car,” I said. “That look like an oil spot to you?”
“Might be leaking a little, yeah. Why?”
“Can you back up a little? Maybe park by those bushes back there?” Clint put the car in reverse while I grabbed the radio to page the K-9 van. When Wayne answered I said, “Remember the oil spot on the street where the dogs dead-ended? I might be looking at the car that made it.”
“Where are you?” Wayne said. I gave him the address and described the alley.
“We’ll come in right behind you,” he said.
“We need a nice quiet approach, if that’s possible.”
“We’ll put the muzzles on.”
As soon as I put the mike down, every car on the search started calling me, stepping on each other so I couldn’t understand any of them, and making a lot of noise. I turned the sound off and called Cunningham on the phone.
“Tom,” I said, “call all the squads and tell them we need a silent approach here. Let’s not stir this up till we see what the dogs think of this car.”
“Copy that. Uh, Jake, you think you can hold the dogs off a few minutes? The chief’s called in his new ERU team and they’re gearing up right now.”
“Tell ‘em to hustle. I’m not sure how these dogs do their work.”
“Copy,” Cunningham said. “Hold on a sec, Jake, the chief wants to tell you…” Frank came on and said, “Just want you to know I got a no-knock search warrant signed by Judge Levy ten minutes ago. Vince is bringing it.”
“Good. Dogs are coming, I gotta go.”
I walked back to the K-9 van as it nosed into the alley. Fritz rolled his window down . “That the car?” he asked.
“Uh-huh. The neighbors say they’ve been watching this house. Lotta late traffic, they say; no regular tenants.” I looked back to where the dogs lay, quietly alert, their eyes gleaming above their screened masks. One of them raised his dark head and growled, low in his throat. Wayne turned and spoke to him, low and sharp, and the dog put his head back on his paws, but kept his unblinking stare on me.
“The chief’s sending up his new emergency response team,” I said. “He thinks we might want to use them on the entry. Will the dogs be okay if we wait a few minutes?”
“Long as we stay in the van they’re under full control; they won’t make a move or a sound till we tell them,” Fritz said. “Once we get out, we’ll give them the shoes to smell again, tell them to follow that scent, and lead them to the car. After that it’s up to them. If they smell the little girl around the car they’re going to make plenty of noise and they’ll go where the smell leads them. Can’t ask them to be quiet while they do that.”
“Understood,” I said. We stood silent a few minutes, smelling the yeasty garden smells of Rutherford in August, corn in the husk, zucchini, and ripening apples. Then Vince Greeley walked up to my elbow and said softly, “The Joy Boys are here. Whaddya want busted?”
He looked awesome. His king-size bulletproof vest bulked up his torso to improbable size, and his head had all but disappeared into his masked helmet. Staley and Frink crouched behind a maple tree, holding their six-foot “key,” its metal battering ram glinting in the sunlight. Cooper and Frye, in their cammy jammies, made odd speckled patches pressed against the hedge. Someone had left a garden rake on the ground where they were kneeling, and I wanted to warn them not to get snagged in it.
“Guess it’s time to go, then,” Wayne said. He got out and opened the back doors of the van. Fritz brought the two dogs out on their leashes. They stood trembling silently while the muzzles came off and then Wayne, wearing gloves, took Jessica’s sneakers out of a paper bag and put them on the ground. The dogs sniffed the shoes a couple of times, whimpering a little while he talked to them softly. Wayne and Fritz each took a leash and walked their dogs to the tan Escort by the gate. The hounds circled it excitedly, nosing it, and when they reached the passenger side they set up that god awful yapping noise I’d heard at the nursery. They dragged their trainers up the path toward the porch. Then my heart banged against my ribs as a child’s scream, high-pitched and horrifying, came from inside the house.
The alley exploded as five cops in speckled suits ran flat-out for the house. Cooper ran toward the corner of the house, carrying the garden rake before him like some improbable lance. Without breaking stride, he drove it with all his might through the rear side window. Then he leaned back, pulling on the handle with his whole weight. The screen and a great spill of shattered glass came out of the window and slammed onto the grass. Frye came behind him, hurling his outsize firecracker through the hole in the window as he ran past it. It went off with a blinding light and a noise like the end of the world.
Staley and Frink took the porch steps two at a time and hit the door with their battering ram, smashing the lock and the top hinge in one mighty lunge. Smoke poured out of the house. Vince ran through the ruined back door behind his body bunker, the red dot of his magic Glock dancing on the billowing smoke. His four teammates, clutching their 40-caliber semiautomatics followed close behind him. The child’s desperate screaming went on and on.
Most of the Rutherford police force had emerged from the yards around the block by then and were running toward the house with their weapons in their hands. Before they reached it, Vince reappeared in the doorway. Keeping his shield between him and the house, he backed across the porch and down the steps. The screaming came with him, I realized suddenly. He was holding Jessica Schultz behind the bunker.
I ran up to him in the yard and grabbed her out of his arms. She felt like hostile rocks. Her torso was hard and rigid, but she seemed to have eight arms and legs, all scratching and kicking. Vince turned as soon as I took her and ran back into the smoke and noise.
Jessica abused me mercilessly while I carried her down the alley to Fifteenth Street. At the curb by the corner I found Mary Agnes Donovan, sheltering behind her squad car with her Glock pointed at the alley. All around the block, cops were similarly deployed. We could spare one of them, I figured.
“Donovan,” I yelled across the squalling kid, “will you take Jessica back to the station?”
“Sure,” Donovan said, “Put her down.” Jessica staggered when I set her down on the sidewalk, then planted both feet firmly, took a deep breath, and went back to screaming with fresh energy. Tears and snot poured down her cheeks. Her face was very red. She was making enough noise for a train wreck. Mary Agnes holstered her weapon and peered critically at the child for a moment, then leaned over and said quietly into her ear, “Jessica, do you want to go see your mom?”
Jessica stopped screaming, took two or three snuffling, raspy breaths, looked into Donovan’s face and said, “Ye-heh-heh-ess.”
“Good,” Donovan said. “Hop in the car then and we’ll go.” Jessica climbed across the front seat like a mountain goat. Donovan slid in beside her and picked the radio mike off its mount. “Tell Schultzy I’m bringing Jessica in right now,” she told Sally, “and she’s okay.” She handed Jessica a handful of Kleenex while she backed out of her spot. Donovan has four boys. Noise does not impress her.
I ran back down the alley and into the house where five cops in multicolored uniforms were running around, slamming doors open and shouting to whoever was in there to come out. They pointed their weapons at the bare walls and blank windows on the ground floor, then sidled up the narrow stairs and threatened the second floor. Finally Vince came back downstairs, sweating profusely. He threw open the front and back doors and waved, and most of the Rutherford police force crunched into the dirty old house and stood gaping.
The air was full of dust and flying slivers of old wood. The shattered remains of the side window glinted on the kitchen floor. The dogs were still howling, too, and all the squads began yelling questions at each other. There was so much noise in the small crowded space I thought my head would burst. I groped over to Wayne and Fritz and yelled into Wayne’s ear, “Ask them to stop barking.”
“It doesn’t quite work like that,” Wayne shouted back, grinning. But he nodded to his partner, and they took the noisy, excited dogs back to the truck.
Maddox walked in and asked me, “Who’s got the kidnapper?”
I looked at Vince. “Nobody, so far,” Vince said. “Jessica is all we found.”
“Did he run away?”
“From this house? There were cops in all the bushes for two blocks around.”
They searched, though. Blue uniforms spread up and down the sidewalks and out into the street. They talked to the neighbors they found peeking anxiously out of windows. They looked into cellars and back yard sheds. After a fruitless hour, they trailed back to the station.
I was standing in the Chief’s office by then, reporting on the debut performance of the ERU team. Schultzy was in his spare chair, looking like Viking Mom, holding her daughter.
“The rake worked okay, huh? And that flash-bang thing?” He was crazy about the lo-tech-hi-tech symmetry of the rake and the firecracker.
“Yup. If the bad guy had been there, we’d’ve had him sure.”
“But he wasn’t? You’re sure? How could that be?”
“Hold on a sec, I just saw Cooper and Frink come in.” I ran downstairs to the supply room where the last of the ERU team was checking in their extra gear.
“All this razzmatazz and nothing to show for it,” Buzz Cooper said, looking tired and hot. “There was nobody in that house but the kid, Jake.”
“Nobody,” I went back up and told Frank. “The house was empty except for Jessica.”
“So is this a kidnapping or what?” Frank demanded, staring at me indignantly. “Beats me,” I said. “He called us. What has he got if he lets her go?”
“Tell me again,” Frank asked Schultzy, “what did he say he wanted?” .
“He never said. I couldn’t get him to answer me. Jessica–” Schultzy rolled her daughter off her lap and set her on her feet. Jessica swayed groggily; the scare had exhausted her, and now she was falling asleep. “Jessica, how did you get out there to that house? Huh? Somebody took you there, right? Who was it? Tell Mama!”
Jessica squeezed her eyes shut and began to cry again. She really did have an extraordinary voice. “Bad boy, Mama!” she howled between sobs. “Bad boy!” She hurled herself back onto Schultzy’s chest and clung there.
“What did he do that was bad?” Schultzy demanded. She tried to pry her daughter loose so she could look at her, but Jessie clung to her fiercely.
“Chief,” Schultzy said, looking up across the noise, “I’m sorry but I think I oughta get this kid home and calm her down.”
“You’re right. Hey, I’m gonna have Donovan drive you.” Frank held up a hand as she started to protest. “Because. I want you to stop off at the clinic and get a check with a sexual assault kit. Only takes a few minutes,” he assured her hastily, “and it would be foolish to skip it. I’ll call ahead and tell ‘em to expect you.”
He followed her out the door, fussing, admonishing, “And then, as soon as you get her home? Let Donovan take off all her clothes and put ‘em in an evidence bag, will you? Has to be paper, not plastic, and it’s safer if it’s done by somebody with experience. We’ll want to check them for hair and fibers and–” He stopped himself before he’d said “semen.” I heard him, farther down the hall, saying, “You call me after she’s had some lunch and a nap, and we’ll see if she feels like talking by then, huh? Maybe she can tell us more about this bad boy.”
He came back in his office and we stared at each other in the glorious silence.
“Rape kit?” I said. “We’re looking for a molester with a showoff streak?”
“Makes just as much sense as a kidnapper that calls the station and then turns the kid loose.”
“Maybe she told him her mama works for the police,” I suggested, “and he chickened out.”
“Uh-huh. Or maybe he used to rape little girls but he reformed,” Frank said, “after he heard how this kid can yell.”
