Authors: Unknown
Her shrieks, tunnelling their way through the apartment and down into the hallway, were partially obscured by Janice’s frantic scream: ‘Bill, my God!’ - all vaguely apprehended, as was Janice’s drained, shocked face staring down at Hoover in unblinking disbelief and hostility.
‘Let go of him!’ she screamed, and began tugging at Hoover’s arm with a strength that was fierce.
‘DADDYDADDYDADDYDADDY-‘
‘Yes, yes, I’m coming,’ Hoover answered, releasing the artery in Bill’s neck and plunging towards the open door.
Blood gushed back into Bill’s head, causing his vision to pulsate with reds and blacks, as the life force slowly returned to the stunned brain.
‘Bill, Bill!’ Janice cried, on her knees beside him, cradling his thickly throbbing head against her breast.
Other doors opened, other people emerged, some in robes -faces Bill didn’t recognize - remained watching mutely, as Bill coughed and gasped for breath and tried to bring his eyes to focus on the door of their apartment, which was now closed.
‘Get a cop!’ he shouted in a rasping voice. ‘That son of a bitch’s got my kid!’
A movement of neighbours, complying, as Bill struggled to his knees and, with Janice’s help, stood up on legs that seemed to belong to someone else.
His face ashen and wild, he stumbled forward towards the door, using Janice’s body as a crutch, and tried the knob, needlessly since he knew the door would be locked, then started to pound on the metal facing with both fists.
‘Son of a bitch, bastard! Open the door, you goddamn bastard!’
The stream of obscenities overflowed the banks of reason, punctuated by battering blows against the door, sending shuddering waves rebounding down the length of the hallway.
‘Somebody get a pass-key!’ he hurled back over his shoulder. The guy’s a kook, a psycho, hurry!’
Mrs Carew detached herself from the small knot of onlookers and quickly waddled down the hallway towards the elevators.
Janice could only watch helplessly, attempting to keep her own hysteria from bursting loose, as Bill continued shouting, cursing, and pummelling the door with his fists.
‘Bill, darling,’ she pleaded, trying to keep her voice under control. ‘It’s all right, he won’t harm her.’
Bill spun a ravaged, sopping face around at her - eyes bulging, trickles of spittle at the corners of his trembling mouth (a face she had never seen before) - and bellowed in a harsh, accusing voice, ‘Keep the hell out of this! I’ve had enough of your bullshit, too!’
Janice flinched, reeled across from him, her heart pumping wildly, in rhythm to the pounding fists resumed and intensified, as was the voice issuing forth, horrible and coarse, from die face she didn’t know.
The distant clang of the elevator door.
Dominick, with keys, white-faced and grim, trotting up to them, selecting from the tinkling bunch first one key, then two, inserting - twisting - opening - SNAP! - the chain bolt flexing
Bill pressed his mouth into the narrow slit.
‘Open up, Hoover,’ he shouted a bit more reasonably. ‘The police are coming!’
Silence from within - deep, ominous.
‘What’s the trouble?’
Two young police officers had approached, unseen, their winter blues exuding a frigid breath.
‘A man’s in my house with my child, Officer! He assaulted me, then locked us out!’
‘Do you know this man?’ the shorter of the two officers asked.
‘His name is Elliot Hoover,’ Janice answered when Bill failed to.
The taller officer stepped up to the door and, raising his nightstick, beat a quick, sharp tattoo against the metal panel.
‘Mr Hoover!’ His voice was shrill with authority. ‘I am a police officer! Open the door!’
He waited the prescribed interval of time for a reply, then turned to Bill.
‘Is there another entrance to the apartment?’
‘Of course.’ Bill slapped his head, angry at his own stupidity. ‘The service entrance, around by the fire stairs!’
They were running - Bill, the policemen, Dominick (fiddling with his keys), and Janice, loping after them in great awkward strides, the sound of neighbours’ whispers and buzzings closing fast behind her.
It was all useless, Janice knew, and as Bill surely must know, the chain lock was never left unhooked on the service door.
Dominick inserted the key, twisted, and pushed. The door opened inward, unencumbered.
Janice froze. A thought too awful to contemplate tantalized her mind. He would not be there, nor would Ivy; he would have left and taken with him - Ivy? No, not Ivy. Audrey Rose, his child.
A deep sigh rumbled out of Bill as he led the policemen and Dominick through the door on the run. Janice lagged behind, in no hurry to confirm her suspicions. The neighbours remained in the service hallway, eagerly curious, wishing to enter, but questioning the propriety of doing so.
Janice heard Mrs Carew solemnly call after her, ‘I do hope Ivy’s all right, dear.’
Janice arrived in the living-room in time to see the file of men clumping grimly down the staircase. Bill’s face was chalk white.
‘They’re gone!’ he informed Janice flatly, then raised his voice. ‘He’s kidnapped Ivy!’
Without breaking stride, they hurried through the living-room and to the front door, Dominick advising the policemen, ‘If you’re talking about Mr Hoover, he just sublet Mr Barbour’s suite on the fifth floor.’
As they approached the elevator, the door of the second elevator slid open and discharged Dr Kaplan. Janice noted his startled expression as the human stampede bore down on him.
‘Ivy’s been kidnapped, Dr Kaplan!’ Bill yelled at him. ‘Come with us!’
‘Yes, certainly,’ the doctor murmured in complete bewilderment and allowed himself to be swept up in the tide of bodies plunging ahead into Dominick’s elevator.
As the door clanged shut, Janice saw the covey of concerned neighbours, led by Mrs Carew, pile into the other car.
The trip down was made in tense silence. Janice’s head throbbed painfully as her eyes critically studied the dry, scuffed leather of Dr Kaplan’s medical bag, worn and battered from years of faithful service, not unlike the binding of Elliot Hoover’s diary.
What happened then was to be for ever recorded in Janice’s mind as a series of flickering images - a speeded-up old-time movie, with the nightstick rapping sharply against Mr Barbour’s door the curtain raiser.
‘Mr Hoover, I am a police officer! Open this door!’
No verbal reply, yet the sound of scurrying footsteps within, clearly heard by all.
‘Mr Hoover, I will ask you once more to open this door!’
The belated reply, distant, muffled: ‘No.’
Bill shouting, ‘Open up, you son of a bitch!’
The shorter policeman cautioning, ‘That’ll do, sir.’ Then turning to Dominick and nodding.
- Inserting the key
- Opening the door
- Chain bolt snapping
-Revealing a thin slice of foyer and Elliot Hoover, partially seen, standing by a Grecian column, grim-faced, resolute
- The policeman thrusting his badge through the opening ‘Will you please open this door, Mr Hoover?’
‘No. There’s been enough insanity for one night.’
- The policeman turning to Bill: ‘What’s your name, sir?’ ‘William Templeton.’
- The policeman addressing Hoover: ‘Do you have Mr Templeton’s child secreted on your premises?’
-Hoover, flustered, replying angrily: They tied her to the bed!’
- The policeman simplifying: ‘Is there a child on your premises?’
‘A child is sleeping upstairs - peacefully.’ ‘Does the child belong to Mr Templeton?’
- A pause, Hoover’s gaze holding theirs implacably. Then: ‘No. It is my child who is sleeping.’
- The policeman, confused, whispering to Bill: ‘What does he mean?’
- Bill spluttering: ‘He’s a nut! Break down the door!’
- The policeman consulting Dominick: ‘Does Mr Hoover have a child?’
-Dominick shaking his head: ‘He didn’t have any yesterday when he moved in.’
- The policeman’s stentorian voice booming through the slit: ‘I will give you thirty seconds to open this door. If you do not comply, I will send for the riot squad to break it down!’
- Mrs Carew’s sharp intake of breath
- Ten seconds
- A smothering hush of anticipation
- Twenty seconds
-Another moment of dogged resistance; then Hoover giving way, slowly approaching the door -Twenty-five seconds
- The door closing
- The chain disengaging
- The door opening gradually
- A sigh of relief, generally exhaled
- Hoover standing mutely in defeat, in the centre of Mr Barbour’s Grecian spa
- Bill pouncing through the door with an animal cry, pushing Hoover roughly aside, running up the narrow staircase, followed by the shorter policeman
- The taller policeman guarding Hoover, watchfully, his right hand near his gun holster
- Bill descending, carrying Ivy (thank God), sleeping soundly, freshly cleaned, her hands rebandaged
- Dr Kaplan’s knowing hand feeling Ivy’s forehead
-The shorter policeman stalking up to Hoover, sober-faced: ‘My name is John Noonan, police officer first class, Badge number 707325. I am placing you under arrest for the suspected felony of kidnapping.’
- Hoover’s eyes seeking and finding Janice’s, probing them sadly and with accusation
- The taller policeman removing the handcuffs from his belt, as his partner produces a booklet and reads from it: ‘You have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have a right to speak to an attorney and have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you, without charge, during questioning …’ - Applause
Was it really applause Janice heard in the surrounding hubbub of neighbourly approval, as Elliot Hoover was led, manacled, down the hallway to the elevator, in the grip of the two policemen? Applause?
‘You have been a practising Catholic all your life, Miss Hall?’
‘I go to church on Sunday.’ The pretty blonde smiled.
‘And what is the name of the church you currently attend?’
The lean, sparrowy figure of the young defence attorney listed at a relaxed, somewhat rakish angle towards the young woman.
‘St Timothy’s in the Village,’ she replied.
Brice Mack’s boyish, ingenuous smile maintained the precise degree of harmless innocence as he carefully selected and put his questions to the twelfth prospective juror, constantly aware of the danger of antagonizing the other jurors by any word or gesture that might be construed as being offensive.
For three weeks the process had continued as the lawyer for the defence and the lawyer for the people delicately scoured among the impanelled veniremen for a jury as prejudiced to its own side of the case as possible.
For Bill, it was a time of sheer hell.
For Janice, it was simply one more episode in the same seemingly endless nightmare. Quite often, as a day wore on, the softly uttered questions and answers would lose the character of speech, become a pleasant, mesmerizing drone, whisking her off into soothing thought-free dream states from which she often didn’t return till the hard sound of the gavel brought the day’s session to an end. They were a looked-forward-to blessing, these happy flights from the stodgy and wearisome goings-on in Part Seven of the Criminal Courts Building in downtown Manhattan.
For the duration of the trial - five weeks at the outside, according to Scott Velie, the deputy district attorney in charge of the case - the Templeton routine was fixed and unchangeable. Weekday mornings at nine, arms linked in a show of mutual support and confidence, Bill and Janice would take their seats in the second row of the nearly empty courtroom and await Judge Langley’s appearance. The front row of seats was set aside for the press, only two of whom were ever present at one time. This morning, there was the man from United Press International and the elderly woman from the Long Island newspaper. On one occasion-the woman had turned suddenly around in her seat and, in a sympathetic, motherly way, tried to question them about the case. Bill had simply ignored her, but Janice could not and had responded with the set speech they had been instructed to give to the press: ‘We have been asked not to discuss the case.’ A few days later the woman reporter asked Janice how Ivy was faring at the school up in Westport, which startled her, since they had kept their daughter’s whereabouts a top secret. Still, Janice was able to smile and reply that Ivy was doing well and was happy, which was the truth. The school had been a success from the start. Janice could see this in the pink and healthy glow of her daughter’s face, in the bright and shining eyes that greeted them each Saturday morning upon their arrival. Best of all, the nightmares had stopped.
Bill had been forced into agreeing to the school in Westport since the district attorney had insisted that both parents be in court each and every day of the trial, but Janice knew he was unhappy about sending Ivy away even though they did not discuss it.
Ever since the night of the kidnapping she and Bill maintained a relationship that could, at best, be described as strained. Always polite, considerate of each other, they were like two strangers on a plane, forced to share each other’s company. Their conversation was limited and noncommittal, each saying no more to the other than was necessary to convey the basic substance of a question or answer.
Bill’s hatred of Hoover and his ambition to see him put away for the full count burgeoned with each passing day. Whenever Janice sought her own feelings about Hoover, a switch in her brain would click off the thought and veer her mind in other directions.
*
For weeks now, at precisely nine four, Janice’s eyes would drift to the side door leading to the prisoner’s holding room and watch as Elliot Hoover was ushered into the courtroom by a uniformed guard, who always, she was constantly surprised to see, held Hoover tightly by the arm.
Janice would always shift her gaze away from Hoover as he was led to his seat at the defence table because once at the beginning of the proceedings Hoover had caught her looking at him and had returned a nod and smile in her direction. Bill, sitting beside her, had noticed, for Janice could feel his arm tense and his breathing rate escalate. She wondered what Hoover thought about during the long days in the courtroom and the even longer nights alone in his prison cell. He had not tried to communicate with her since his arrest. She had half expected he would and had steeled herself to repel any such attempts, but she was thankful he hadn’t tried. Looking back on their evening together, fraught with its odd commingling of terror and intimacy, she wondered if Hoover considered her a traitor.