First Offense, page 10
“You’re right. He shouldn’t have. But it makes a difference if it was one time, or he could keep getting more. Do you see that?”
“I suppose.”
“So, which was it?”
Tony just sat silently on the couch, his eyes once again turned downward.
“Frankie is in real trouble. Some boys at the juvenile-detention center beat him so badly that he was taken to the hospital. If he goes back, they might kill him the next time. I know you don’t like him, but do you want that to happen?”
Tony looked up and whispered, “No.”
“Tell me what really happened.”
“He showed me the joints, that’s all. He never said he could get more.”
Mrs. Cuen’s hands flew to her chest. “Sweetie, how could you?”
“I didn’t think they’d send him away. I just wanted to get him in trouble. He always rubbed it in our face how smart he was.”
“Now’s your chance to do the right thing,” Tommy said. “I need you to sign a document admitting what you just told me. Will you do that?”
“He’ll give you what you need,” Mrs. Cuen said.
When Tommy left, he settled in for the drive up to Raleigh. He wouldn’t get there until the middle of the night, but that suited him fine. With fewer people around, he hoped he could persuade the stationmaster to let him review the security tapes—that is, if they had any.
With just a quick stop for a bite to eat, and his foot on the pedal most of the way, he reached the Amtrak station in Raleigh at 2:30 a.m. He made his way inside and found the ticket booths. Only one was manned.
“Hi. I wonder if there’s a security detail at this station?”
The man nodded, then pointed down a corridor. “Third door on the left.”
“Someone there this time of night?”
“Someone’s there twenty-four-seven.”
Tommy thanked him, then found the office. He knocked first, then opened the door. Sitting at a desk inside was an elderly man who looked shrunken in his own skin. The few hairs that remained on his mostly bald head were white, and his hands were covered in age spots. Tommy figured it had been a long time since he had been able to handle any real emergency, but he supposed that’s why he was on the graveyard shift.
He looked up when Tommy entered. “Can I help you?”
Tommy handed him his card. “A twelve-year-old boy took a train from Savannah to Raleigh two nights ago, and he hasn’t been seen since. I’m here on behalf of his mother, who’s worried sick. I was hoping you have surveillance cameras that might show if he got off here, and if anyone was with him.”
The man leaned back in his chair and turned Tommy’s card over and back. “Help Innocent Prisoners Project? This boy do something wrong?”
“My boss is his uncle. He’s just trying to help.”
“We do have cameras. Covers every track and the main terminal. But you’re not police. Can’t show it to you without a warrant.”
“I appreciate those are the rules. I’m former FBI. Ten years with them. Worked out of the New York office—criminal-investigations division, then counterterrorism. This boy . . . we’re worried that a predator has taken him.” He pulled out his address book and flipped to the M’s, then pointed out a name to the man. “This guy, he’s on the FBI’s Child Abduction Response Deployment team. If it looks like the boy’s with someone, I’ll bring him in. Can you help me out? It’d take a load of worry off his mother if she saw he was okay.”
The man looked at the clock on the wall. “Well, can’t say I’m real busy now. Since you’re former law enforcement, I guess I can make an exception. But don’t you go telling anyone I let you see them. If you spot someone squirrely, then bring in who you need to without telling them you already took a gander at the films. Deal?”
“Absolutely.” Tommy smiled at the man. “What’s your name?”
“Phillip. Former cop myself. Retired after thirty-one years, but it’s too damn boring sitting at home.”
Tommy wondered how it could be less boring than sitting in a mostly empty train station all night long.
Phillip walked over to a file cabinet and opened a drawer. “Two nights ago, you say?”
“He boarded the train in Savannah two nights ago. He would have arrived here the following morning.”
He riffled through some folders, then took out three disks. “This one covers track three during the period from eight a.m. to eight p.m. that day. This covers the terminal, and the last covers the parking lot. You can watch them on that computer,” Phillip said as he pointed to a second desk.
Tommy fought his fatigue as he sat down at the desk. He’d left his home early for a flight to Tampa, then waited hours to speak to Tony, then drove nine hours to Raleigh. He wanted to find a motel and crawl into bed, come back the next morning to screen the tapes. But, if Frankie had been abducted, then every minute counted. And, more important, the guard on the daytime shift might not be so accommodating. He put in the first disk and waited while it loaded, then double-clicked the lone file in the directory. Finally, a grainy picture of a train platform came up, with hordes of passengers. There was a time stamp at the top right-hand corner. The train from Savannah should have arrived shortly before nine a.m.
Tommy fast-forwarded to 8:50, then sat back and watched. At 8:53, a train pulled into the station. A handful of passengers disembarked from each car, and Tommy slowed down the tape to examine each one. Finally, he spotted a boy who looked like the picture Jessica had shown him of Frankie. It was hard to see the boy’s face clearly on the video, but it seemed like him. A man stepped off the train right behind the boy, motioned for him to follow, and the boy did.
After a few steps, the boy tapped the man’s shoulder to stop, then he bent down, opened up his backpack, and pulled out a jacket. As he stood up, he lifted his face for a clear shot on the camera. The boy was Frankie Bishop. Tommy watched as he walked away with a stranger.
CHAPTER
16
Tommy waited until six a.m. to phone Clyde Metzger. He’d worked with him in the old days, before Tommy left the FBI and before Metzger transferred to the FBI’s Child Abduction Response Deployment, or CARD, team at Quantico. “Better weather,” he’d told him back then. “Can’t take these New York winters anymore.”
“Metzger,” a drowsy voice said when the phone was answered.
“Clyde, it’s Tommy. Tommy Noorland.”
“What the hell time is it?”
“Early. And this isn’t a social call.”
Now the voice at the other end sounded wide awake. “Tell me.”
“I think a twelve-year-old boy has been abducted.” Tommy filled him in on the whole tale, from Frankie’s arrest to his beating to his escape from the hospital, and finally, the surveillance video from the railway station. “Can you get a warrant for the video? Without letting on that I’ve seen it already? I don’t want to get the old guy in trouble.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll call an agent in the Charlotte office. He’ll bring their Division Counsel up to speed. We can get a warrant as soon as court opens. I have to tell you, though, two days is a long lead time.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Where are you now?”
“Raleigh. In a motel near the railroad. Holiday Inn.”
“Hold on a sec.” The phone was quiet for a minute. “Just checked the schedules. There’s a flight out at eight thirty, gets in at nine thirty-seven. Stay put. I’ll put a team together, and we’ll pick you up. I’ll call you back when we’re close.”
Tommy had two more calls to make. First, to Dani, and then the harder call, to Jessica. He hadn’t wanted to phone either of them before bringing in the FBI. He didn’t want them, especially Jessica, to try to talk him out of notifying law enforcement. But what he’d seen on the tape convinced him that Frankie needed more help than HIPP could provide.
He waited another half hour before calling Dani. After he described what he saw on the video, she groaned. “You did the right thing, calling your friend first. I’ll call Jessica and let her know what’s happening.”
After Tommy hung up, he lay down on the bed. He’d slept only a few hours. There was nothing more he could do until Clyde and his team arrived. Within minutes, he was asleep.
Dani turned to Doug, still half-asleep in their bed. “It’s what we feared. He left the train station with some man.”
“I’m sorry. It won’t be easy to find him now.”
She refused to believe that. With Tommy’s ties to the FBI and his bulldog perseverance, she knew they wouldn’t give up. Bruce wouldn’t want them to. She didn’t want to. She pushed away the voice in her head that cautioned her to be realistic, to not hold out false hope.
“I have to call Jessica, let her know.” It was not a call she wanted to make, but she dialed the number anyway. When Jessica answered, she told her what Tommy had seen on the tape. Dani heard a low, guttural moan come from her, and waited until Jessica was ready to speak. Finally, after several minutes, Jessica asked, “What happens now?”
“Tommy has already brought in the FBI. They’re on their way to Raleigh right now.”
“And if they find him, they’ll send him back to Eldridge.”
Dani could hear soft cries on the other end of the phone.
“I thought returning to Eldridge would be the worst thing that could happen to Frankie,” Jessica said. “Now I pray for that to happen.”
With his thick, honey-blond hair and body sculpted by a daily gym regimen, Clyde Metzger, despite turning fifty-two months ago, still looked more like a movie star than a seasoned FBI agent. When Tommy opened his motel door to him, he shook his head and scowled. “What fountain of youth are you drinking from? You don’t look a day older than the last time I saw you. And that was twelve years ago.”
Metzger pointed to the few gray hairs at his temple. “Proof I’m still mortal,” he said.
Tommy walked out with Clyde to his car, where another agent waited in the passenger seat.
“Tommy, meet Special Agent Henry Greco. He’s out of the Charlotte field office.”
They exchanged hellos, then Tommy got into the backseat for the drive to the Raleigh railroad station. Another man was in the security office, younger than Phillip by at least thirty years. Metzger handed him the warrant, explained what they were looking for, and when handed the disks, sat down at the same computer where Tommy had viewed them earlier. It didn’t take long to cue up to the point where Frankie exited the train.
There was a clear shot of Frankie’s face, but not of the man he was with. Metzger forwarded the disk frame by frame, and the best shot was a side view. “This may be enough,” Metzger said. He took a screenshot, then forwarded it back to his office. “We’ll run it through facial-recognition software. It’ll probably take a few hours.”
He slid in the disk from the parking lot, then fast-forwarded it to the time immediately after Frankie’s train arrived. The three watched it silently, until Tommy, said, “There!” and pointed to Frankie and the man getting into a silver Mercedes sedan.
“Keep your fingers crossed,” Metzger said as he slowed the tape down. As the car drove away, they caught a glimpse of the license plate, but it was too distant for them to make out the numbers and letters. Once again, Metzger took a screenshot of the plate and forwarded it to headquarters. “They should be able to enhance it.”
Before leaving, Metzger made a copy of the disks for the security guard, then placed the originals in an evidence sleeve. “Okay. Let’s go see the mother now.”
Jessica hadn’t stopped crying since the phone call from Dani. All day, she’d paced back and forth, blaming herself. She never should have moved to Florida, away from the familiarity of an army base. It was unfair to Frankie to make another move after so many. She should have paid more attention to his problems adjusting to the new school. She should have hired a better attorney, or not listened to him when he said it was pointless to appeal. She shouldn’t have let her worry about Alex supplant her worry about Frankie.
Bobby’s admission had stunned her. If he’d come forward before Frankie’s hearing, wouldn’t that have proven Frankie wasn’t selling drugs? Wouldn’t that have kept Frankie at home? Still, if Bobby had told her then, would she have insisted he testify? She didn’t know the answer. Bobby’s heart had been set on the Marines for so long, it would have been a terrible blow for him to be kicked out. And Frankie was just a child. His attorney had promised that he’d just get a slap on the wrist.
It was too much for her. She needed Alex. She needed him home, his strong arms around her, his reassurance that everything would work out, that they’d find Frankie, that he’d be okay.
She’d met Alex when they were still high school students, he the captain of the football team, she a flautist in the school’s marching band. From the time they began dating in their junior year, they’d been inseparable, even when they attended different colleges four hours apart. She’d thought it would be her parents who objected to the interracial pair, but they welcomed him from the start. It was Alex’s parents who’d been troubled by her, but they’d come around by the time they married.
She knew when she said yes to his marriage proposal that she’d be an army wife—Alex had always been clear about his goals. And her mother-in-law had helped her understand what it meant to be an army wife—the uprooting every few years, the stress when a loved one was engaged in a combat zone, the bulk of child care on her shoulders. It didn’t matter. She loved Alex and would adapt. And she had. She’d built a career as a graphic artist that enabled her to find work wherever they lived. One that she could perform at home much of the time. As long as she had her laptop, she could work anywhere. But Alex had always been there for her, even when he was deployed. She’d never gone more than a week without Skyping with him, hearing his voice, and seeing his handsome face, with its big, brown eyes and lashes so thick, they didn’t belong on a man. Bobby had the same eyes as Alex, the same dark skin and tall, muscled body. But Bobby was her son. She needed her husband, now more than she ever had. And he was gone.
She jumped from her chair when she heard the loud knock on the door, then opened it to see Tommy Noorland with two men.
“Jessica, how are you holding up?” he asked as he stepped in the room.
She immediately began crying again, and Tommy pulled her to him. One of the men retrieved a box of tissues from the nightstand and handed it to her. She took one and dried her tears.
“This is FBI Special Agent in Charge Clyde Metzger. He handles child abductions. And this is Special Agent Henry Greco, from the FBI’s Charlotte office. They’re going to find Frankie.”
Metzger held out his hand. “We’ll going to try our best to get him back, ma’am.”
“Do you know who took him?”
“Not yet. But we’re working on it.” Metzger handed her the screenshot of the man. “Do you recognize him? Could it be someone Frankie knows?”
Jessica shook her head.
“We have the screenshot of Frankie, but we need a better picture. Do you have one with you?”
Jessica grabbed her purse and pulled out a school photo of her son. “This was taken six months ago.”
“Perfect. We’ll get this sent around to law-enforcement agencies right away. And speaking of law enforcement, we need to notify the folks at the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. I expect they’ll loop in the local police.”
Jessica’s heart sank. It kept getting worse and worse.
“Tell me about Frankie. What’s he like? It’ll help us if we know his strengths and weaknesses.”
For the next half hour, Jessica talked about her son. It helped to talk about him, to get her mind off the heartache she felt when she thought about where he was now, whom he was with, what they might do to him.
They were interrupted by the ringing of Metzger’s phone. He excused himself, stepped outside the room, then returned a few minutes later.
“We got an ID on the guy. Name is John Felder. He’s been on our radar for a while as part of a ring, but we haven’t been able to nail him. We don’t think he’s a pedophile himself, but he’s part of a group that fills orders for particular requests from pedophiles.”
“Damn,” Tommy muttered.
“The good news is that they were able to make out the license plate. We’re putting up an AMBER Alert with the description of his car and plate number on all the highway signs leading away from the train station.”
“You’re tracking his credit-card usage, right?”
Metzger nodded.
Tommy looked over at Jessica. She’d sunk down on the big-cushioned chair in the corner, and her face was deathly pale.
CHAPTER
17
Yesterday, Dani had rushed off a petition for emergency relief, then filed it in the juvenile court located in Cypress County, where Frankie’s delinquency hearing had been held. A copy had been faxed to Warren Camden, the assistant state attorney covering that court. When Dani entered the courtroom, Camden was already seated. She took in his wrinkled suit and hair combed over a bald spot, and wondered if he cultivated that look to make jurors sympathetic toward him.
After Judge Humphrey entered the courtroom, he asked, his voice tight, “What’s this all about, Ms. Trumball?”
The judge looked down at her with eyes that seemed weary. His dull brown hair, devoid of any trace of gray, seemed inconsistent with the deep wrinkles on his face. He dyes his hair, I bet.
“Two months ago, you ruled that Francis Bishop was a delinquent and ordered him sent to a secure residential facility. He was placed at Eldridge Academy.”
“I remember. He had a drug problem.”
“That was your determination, although we continue to maintain he’d never used drugs.”
“If his lawyer didn’t like my finding, he should have appealed. It’s too late for that now.”
“I appreciate that. But, as you’ll see in the filed papers, the boy who testified against him admitted in his sworn affidavit that he lied when he said that Frankie claimed he could get more drugs. Accordingly, we believe it’s within your discretion to determine that he’s spent sufficient time in a residential facility.”
