Alice in Jeopardy: A Novel (14 page)

“If I was about to kidnap some kids, I’d make damn sure I didn’t tell Avis where
I’d
be staying, either.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s her name, this woman?”

“Clara Washington.”

Stone almost asks, “Black?”

He doesn’t.

But a name like Washington?

Has to be black, doesn’t it?

“Avis rep who rented the car to her says she was black,” Sally says, beating him to the punch. “Woman in her thirties, about five-eight, five-nine, good-looking according to the Avis person. Showed a New York driver’s license as ID. Charged the lease to an American Express credit card.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“We checked with American Express; they do not have any card holder named Clara Washington in the city of New York. We checked with the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles; they did not issue a driver’s license to anyone named Clara Washington in the city of New York. It would appear that both pieces of ID are false, sir.”

“Dime a dozen nowadays.”

“Dime a dozen, sir.”

“So you don’t really know if a state line
has
been crossed. If that driver’s license came in a Cracker Jack box…”

“That’s what I meant by ‘not quite proof,’ sir.”

“If the driver’s license is queer, the woman could have come from anywhere. Could’ve got off a bus from Jacksonville or Tallahassee, could’ve walked over to the airport from downtown Fort Myers, no state line crossed, no reason for the FBI to come into the case, end of story.”

“
Except,
sir—”

“Except what?”

“Except if we find her, and she really
is
from New York, and we nail her for the kidnapping, then we had good reason all along to assume the case fell within federal jurisdiction. And we become the heroes, sir.”

“Heroes,” Stone says.

“Yes, sir. And
not
the Cape October PD.”

“Heroes,” Stone repeats.

There was a time when a hero was someone who single-handedly charged a Vietcong machine-gun nest with a hand grenade in each hand and a bayonet clenched between his teeth. Now you were a hero if you tracked down a little colored girl—well, not so little, five-eight, five-nine—who may or may not have crossed a state line in
anticipation
of committing a crime that would get your name and your face all over television if you caught her.

“So what do you suggest, Ballew?”

He almost called her “Balloons.”

“We have the license plate number, sir. I suggest we do a sweep of all the area motels, hotels, B & B’s, what-have-you, see if we can’t find that car and that woman.”

“Declare ourselves officially in this thing?”

“Not until we’re sure we’ll be making an arrest, sir. Otherwise, we let the local cops take the heat.”

Stone is wondering how many of his people he will need for a sweep of all these area dwellings. But if he doesn’t grant Special Agent Ballew’s simple request, will she then file a report to division headquarters later on, claiming she went to her superior with information about a kidnapping, and he swept it under the carpet the way certain flight-school information was swept under the carpet prior to the 9/11 attacks?

Stone is tempted to tell Special Agent Sally Ballew here to take a walk, they have no jurisdiction.

But the entire nation is ready to reward whistle-blowers of every stripe and persuasion nowadays, a far cry from the scorn heaped upon one of the country’s true heroes, Linda Tripp.

“Set up the sweep,” he says. “Full team, twenty-four-seven, the whole nine yards. But find this woman fast, or back off.”

Sally can almost see herself on television already.

“I’ll find her, sir,” she says.

The little digital clock on Stone’s desk reads 1:47:03.

The phone call comes
at two o’clock sharp.

By then, Charlie has figured out the wiretap equipment and is sitting with the earphones on his head. He flicks a switch and nods for Alice to pick up.

“Hello?” she says.

“We’ve got a problem here,” the woman says. Alice’s heart leaps into her throat. Charlie is suddenly attentive, as if he’s listening for incoming mail at Khe Sanh.

“Somebody followed me,” the woman says.

“Let me talk to Ashley.”

“No, your daughter’s got a big mouth, you don’t have to talk to her again,” the woman says. “My partner spotted them behind us. Two men in a maroon Buick. It wasn’t for a garbage truck, we’d be in serious trouble here.”

Alice says nothing.

My partner, she is thinking. Does this mean her partner in this ambitious little enterprise of theirs? Or does it mean her
sexual
partner? Is this a pair of lesbians she’s dealing with?

“Were they cops?” the woman asks.

“I don’t know who they might have been,” Alice says. “I don’t know anything about it.”

“Are they there with you now?”

“No one’s here with me,” Alice says.

“I’ll call you back, anyway,” the woman says, and hangs up.

“That’s her pattern,” Alice explains. “She’s afraid we’ll be tracing the call.”

“Is she right about that Buick?”

“I have no idea.”

“How damn stupid can these people be?”

“I told you, Charlie. They deserted me this morning…”

“Putting a clumsy tail on—”

The telephone rings.

“There she is,” Charlie says.

Alice picks up.

“Hello?” she says.

“Why’d you call the police?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then who were those men in the Buick?”

“I don’t know. I came there alone. I don’t know anything about anyone following you. Let me talk to my daughter.”

“Forget it.”

“You said—”

“Never mind what I said. You went back on your word.”

“I did
not
call the police!” Alice screams into the phone.

Even Charlie almost believes her.

The woman is silent for a moment.

Then there’s another click on the line.

“Damn her,” Alice says, “I could
kill
her!”

“When she calls back, get right to the point. Tell her she’s got the money, ask her when and where you can pick up the kids.”

Alice nods.

“Okay?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t let her rattle you. If the kids have been harmed already—”

“Oh Jesus, Charlie, don’t even—”

“—they wouldn’t be calling you, don’t you see, Alice? The kids are still all right.”

The phone rings.

“Remember. Stick to the point. When, where? Stay calm.”

“Okay.”

“Pick it up.”

He throws the
LISTEN
switch. Alice picks up the receiver.

“Hello?” she says.

“We can’t give you the kids today,” the woman says.

“You promised…”

“We have to check out the money first.”

They’ll discover it’s fake, Alice thinks. They’ll—

“Give us time,” the woman says, and suddenly her voice softens. “Your kids are okay, just give us a little time here.”

And she is gone again.

It is ten past two
by the time Carol gets to I-75 South. Big rigs like the ones Rafe drives are roaring at her on the other side of the divider.

She figures it will take her some ten to twelve hours to get to Cape October. According to her map, it’s a good hour or more to Macon, some sixty-five miles or so, before she has to turn off at the Valdosta exit to merge with I-475 South. Just now, she feels wide awake and peppy, but she plans to stop at a motel for the night, get to the Cape in time for breakfast tomorrow morning. The longest stretch of road will be the four-hundred-plus miles between Macon and St. Pete, but she’s made the trip before—with kids screaming in the backseat, no less—and she knows she can make it this time, too, with no sweat.

She cannot possibly imagine how Alice must feel, her kids gone and a passel of fools handling the case. She can remember times when the two of them were growing up in Peekskill, Carol the older sister and constantly getting Alice out of jams. But nothing as serious as this had ever—

Well, Eddie drowning that way.

Carol had taken the first plane down out of Atlanta. She thought her younger sister would never get through it; God, how she loved that man. Held her sister in her arms, sobbing, Alice clutching a photo of Eddie with his shining blue eyes and crooked grin and pale unruly hair.

Carol wonders what it’s like to love a person that much. Here alone behind the wheel of the Ford Explorer, trucks coming at her like attacking Martian spaceships, she wonders if in fact she really loves Rafe at all, really ever loved him at all.

Unlike her sister, Carol never went for the slight slender type, oh no, it was always the big brawny college football hero or the wrestling team champ. Though Rafe is neither, Rafe never even graduated from high school; no wonder he got in trouble with the law those two times. Well, dope. Everybody’s into dope these days, she hopes some damn dope fiends haven’t got their hands on those two adorable kids, what on earth is
wrong
with the cops down there, handling this so damn stupidly?

Her foot is pressed hard to the accelerator.

A glance at the speedometer tells her she’s hitting seventy, seventy-five, the needle wavering. She doesn’t want to get stopped by the Georgia Highway Patrol, but neither does she want to drive along too slowly, risk lulling herself to sleep that way. Rafe told her once that he averages ninety miles an hour on his long hauls; he was probably lying to her, ninety is really too fast.

His call this morning was… well, peculiar.

Broke the news to her about the kidnapping, told her Alice was already on the way to meet whoever it was had the kids, carrying a bag full of funny money, he sure hoped those people would accept it.

“What do you mean?” Carol said.

“Otherwise, there might be trouble.”

“You mean if they…?”

“If they tip to the money being fake,” Rafe said.

“Well, you just told me it’s very good stuff.”

“Is what the cops told Alice, yes.”

“So how can they tip?”

“These people ain’t fools, you know,” Rafe said. “You can’t be a moron and figure out something like this.”

“That’s right, it takes a rocket scientist to grab two kids and ask for ransom.”

“I mean, the way they’ve been handling it, Carol. I’ve been right here, you know, I see how the woman hangs up every two, three seconds, I see how carefully they’ve worked this whole thing out. All I’m saying is I hope they don’t realize Alice brought them counterfeit money. I worry about them kids, Carol.”

She wonders now if he really worries about Alice’s kids, or anybody’s kids, for that matter. Or anyone but his own self.

Carol has long suspected that her husband plays around on these long trips of his. Never calls her when he’s on the road—today was an exception, but it’s not every day your sister’s kids get kidnapped. Gone sometimes three, four weeks when he’s hauling to the West Coast, you think he’d call every few days, tell her he loves her, whatever. Never does. That’s either a man who’s in tight control of his emotions, or else it’s a man fooling around with whatever comes his way on the road, she wouldn’t be at all surprised.

Something else he said continues to bother her.

It was just before Christmas. Carol had invited Alice and the kids up to Atlanta, but she said she had to stay down there on the Cape, where Jamie’s speech therapist was, he had already stopped talking by then. Rafe told Carol that he’d read something in the
Atlanta Constitution
about some insurance company paying any accident-related claims within a week of filing, even without death certificates.

“So when’s this insurance company of
Alice’s
gonna pay
her
that two-fifty?” he asked.

“I’m sure Alice is asking that very same question along about now,” Carol said.

“Be nice to get
our
hands on some of that, wouldn’t it?” Rafe said.

“What makes you think…?”

“Be
real
nice,” he said.

Carol wondered about this at the time. She knew her sister would be coming into $250,000 as soon as that insurance claim was settled, and she knew she and Rafe still had a big mortgage on the house, and payments on the Ford to make each and every month, and it would certainly be helpful if Alice decided to be generous with a little of that money. But Carol would never ask, and Rafe knew that, and so it was funny that he’d brought up the insurance money, and she’d wondered about it at the time.

She is still wondering about it.

She keeps her foot pressed hard to the accelerator.

“How do we know
they didn’t rent a condo?” Forbes asks.

“That’s another possibility,” Sally says.

“People come down, rent a condo for a week or two,” Forbes elaborates.

“I know that.”

“What I’m saying, this could turn into a wild goose chase,” Forbes says.

In fact, he doesn’t like the way this whole damn thing is shaping up.

First off, they are putting those children in harm’s way. That is the plain and simple truth of the matter. Stone knows that, and so does Sally. You go knocking on someone’s door, ask did they rent a blue Impala at the airport, if they’ve got the kids inside there with them, they’re going to panic and maybe blow the kids away. That is a fact that should be evident to any law enforcement officer. That is the first thing that stinks to high heaven here.

The second thing is that this is once again turning into a footrace with the local fuzz, everybody grabbing for the gold ring, never mind the welfare of the vics. It’s who’s gonna bring home the bacon, who’s gonna end up the glory boys and girls. There’s no question but that the FBI can use a little praise these days, the way we fouled up before and after 9/11, none of us has yet found whoever it was mailed that anthrax around, now have we?

So jump on the merry-go-round, boys and girls, and let’s see who can find that blue Impala first, us or the local yokels, and pray to God nobody behind one of those hotel, motel, B & B, what-have-you doors won’t start blasting away the minute we say those words “FBI” and show the shield, just pray to God, boys, just pray to God.

The FBI has not
shared with the Cape October PD’s Criminal Investigations Division the information it gathered from the Avis desk at the airport. So Captain Roger Steele does not know that the person who rented a blue Impala four days ago showed identification bearing the name Clara Washington.

Steele knows only that a blue Impala driven by a slender blonde picked up a good-looking black girl some five feet seven inches tall— close enough to the five-eight or -nine described by the Avis woman, but that’s another thing he doesn’t know. He does know that the girl was carrying Alice Glendenning’s Louis Vuitton bag full of Monopoly money, and he further knows that the car was subsequently obscured by an orange Cape October Department of Sanitation garbage truck, thereby eluding their grasp this morning. He also knows that the blue Chevy has got to be out there someplace because, as Detective Wilbur Sloate put it to him, “
Ever’body
gotta be someplace, boss.”

So Steele has put out an all-points bulletin for the car, and meanwhile, his entire CID team is out checking every hotel and motel in town, hoping to locate the blue car and consequently the black girl and her blonde girlfriend.

Cape October is a city of 143,000 year-round residents, 90 percent of them white, 8 percent of them Cubans who have drifted over to the West Coast from Miami, 2 percent of them black, and the remainder a tiny spattering of Asians. There are twenty-four churches of varying denominations on the Cape, ranging from Catholic to Baptist to Jewish (Orthodox and Reform) to Presbyterian to Lutheran to Seventh-Day Adventist and including two for the Mennonite sect, its followers identified by the black clothing and beards worn by the men, and the plain dresses and simple white caps worn by the women.

And because the Cape is a tourist destination, there are also fifty-two hotels, motels, small inns, and cottages in this town, not to mention a few dozen more bed-and-breakfast places.

Roger Steele does not think the kidnappers would risk taking those two kids to any of the bigger hotels or even to one of the resorts out on the keys. But there are small motels all up and down the Trail, and even some out on Grosse Bec. These are the ones his team of sixteen CID detectives are checking. Sixteen detectives. That’s all Steele has. This is a very small number of detectives for such a mighty number of venues, even assuming the perps are still in the state of Florida.

And besides, it is starting to rain again.

The manager of the
Shell station on U.S. 41 and Lewiston Point Road is not happy to see three detectives from the Cape October Police Department coming out of the rain at two-thirty that Friday afternoon.

One of the cops, a burly black man named Johnson, tells the manager they’re investigating an automobile theft.

“The thief may have used the ladies’ room sometime this morning. So we’d like to go in there and look around, if that’s okay with you.”

“What kind of car was it?” the manager asks.

“Cadillac Saville,” Johnson lies, without batting an eyelash.

“We get lots of Savilles in here,” the manager says.

“Yeah,” Johnson says. “So if you’ll unlock the ladies’ room for us, we’ll just go about our business.”

“It’s unlocked as it is,” the manager says.

“Well, fine then, we’ll just get out of your way.”

The three Mobile Crime Unit cops have been sent by Captain Steele to get everything they can from the ladies’ room where Mrs. Glendenning dropped the ransom money, and where an as-yet-unidentified suspect picked up the bag and managed to elude a successful surveillance. Steele’s game plan, such as it is, is to find out if the black girl who sashayed off with two-fifty large in supers has a record of any kind. From what his detectives have told him, Steele has a pretty good inkling that Mrs. Glendenning isn’t too happy about the continued presence of the Cape October Police in this case. So he intends to send Sloate and Di Luca back to her with some real information, as soon as he
gets
some real information, before she goes blabbing on television that the cops in this neck of the woods don’t know what they’re doing.

Unfortunately, the two suspect women—the blonde and the black girl—have thus far eluded pursuit, and so far none of the Cape October uniforms have spotted the suspect blue Impala. So he figures if the MCU can come up with real meat, then he can go back to the Glendenning woman and calm her down regarding the procedure they’ve been following, a perfectly sound procedure, by the way, that resulted in a capture and conviction in the Henley case three years ago, even though the little boy was dead by the time they got there.

The three MBU cops know how important this case is to the captain, so they go over the ladies’ room with more devotion to detail than they might normally lavish at any crime scene. They vacuum the place top to bottom for stray hairs or fibers, they dust the sink faucets and knobs for latent fingerprints, and the paper towel dispenser, and the hand drier, too, and the doorknobs—inside and out—on the entrance door, and the turn bolt lock on the entrance door, and the latch on the door to the one stall in the room, and the flush handle on the toilet, and the toilet seat, and the toilet-paper holder, and the windowsill, and the little pulls on the window sash, and the window itself, and anything and everything in that room. It is almost two-thirty by the time they leave the place.

The manager tells them he’s had a lot of complaints from ladies who had to pee.

Johnson, the detective/first heading up the team, tells him he should have directed them to the men’s room.

“Shoulda thought of that,” the manager says.

It is still raining.

In Cape October,
during the rainy season—but May is not the rainy season—you can expect a thunderstorm along about three or four every afternoon, at which time the humidity and the heat have combined to leave the suffering citizenry virtually limp. The rain, when it comes, mercilessly assaults the sidewalks and the streets, but only for an hour or so. During that short while, the torrential downpour brings at least a semblance of relief. But once the rain stops, you’d never know it had been there at all. Oh, yes, the gutters are running with swift-flowing muddy water, and there are huge brown puddles everywhere, and here and there a truly flooded street—but the heat and the humidity follow as closely behind the brief storm as does a rapist his victim. Within minutes you are sweating again.