“That’s too much,” Willie said.
Bill shook his head.
“You’re worth it,” Bill said. “Always are. You take care, Willie.”
“You take care, Mayor,” Willie said, repeating it back to him with a smile.
Bill left, shaking hands with the other men in the waiting area, glad-handing and smiling at each of them, except for one young kid who had his head buried in his hands. The Mayor even stopped and shook Frank’s hand. The guy was clearly a glad-handing politician, perpetually running for office. Someone used to smiling and nodding and working behind the scenes to get his way. The little bell rang on his way out.
Willie took a minute, beating at the barber chair with a towel and sweeping up the hair on the floor around it. When he was done cleaning, he turned and nodded at Frank.
“Your turn, son.”
Frank glanced at the others waiting, but they shook their heads.
“Don’t worry ‘bout them,” Willie said to Frank. “They waiting for Chuck.”
Chuck smiled. He was missing several teeth.
“Yup,” Chuck said. “Gotta love those loyal customers, right?”
Willie scowled and shot him a look as Frank settled into the empty barber chair. Willie tied the barber cloth around Frank’s neck.
“What we doin’ today?” Willie asked.
“Needs to be tidy,” Frank said curtly. “Short on top. Trim it above the ears and along the hairline in the back.”
Willie nodded, clearly sensing there would be little or no small talk. He got to work trimming Frank’s hair, occasionally squirting with a spray bottle to get the hair to lie flat. After a few minutes, Willie settled into a quiet routine.
“So, you from around here?” Willie asked Frank.
“No,” Frank said.
Again, Frank heard the silence hanging there and knew he was supposed to fill it. He practiced his patience, concentrating on the clicking scissors working to tidy him up.
“Where you from?” Willie asked after a long, quiet minute.
Frank sighed.
“Just up from Birmingham for a couple days.”
Willie nodded.
“Oh, Alabama. Nice down there?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Frank said. He didn’t volunteer anything, and after a long pause, Willie nodded again and set in to cutting. Frank guessed that maybe he’d given up trying to chit chat with Frank.
“They’re not gonna find those girls,” Chuck said, starting the other conversation back up again. From this angle, Frank could see more tattoos on the back of Chuck’s neck, running up into the hair. Jail tattoos, roughly applied with handmade tools. Painful.
Chuck was nodding, as he talked, his eyes on the customer in his chair. “But I’ve known a few bad folks,” Chuck continued, his voice suddenly quiet. “I bet the girls are already dead.”
Frank heard a low sound, like a sob, but couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.
Willie nodded, working on Frank’s hair. Frank had let it get way too long in the back, and Willie was taking off hunks with loud snips of his scissors. He was working quickly, with the practiced, quiet efficiency of someone who had been doing this for a long time.
“No, not yet,” Willie said. “They need the girls for the phone call. Prove they alive still.”
“But you heard Bill, and he’s on city council,” Chuck said, shaking his head. “The FBI isn’t helping, and Chief King isn’t confident. Why wait so long for that first call? It doesn’t make sense to wait almost a week to call the parents, let them know you got their kid, right?”
Willie shrugged. Frank could see they were using the mirror on the wall to glance at each other. Next to the mirror hung a pinup of some blonde actress. The photo looked at least twenty years old, tattered and yellow around the edges.
“Well, nobody knows for sure, right?” Willie said. He turned and eyed Chuck intently, then nodded at one of the waiting patrons.
Frank followed Willie’s gaze to the waiting patrons seated by the window. One of the people waiting was a young man, and he appeared visibly shaken by the conversation. Evidently, no one had noticed how upset the conversation was making him, and now the teenager had buried his face in his hands.
Chuck saw the young man sobbing and swallowed so loud Frank could hear the click in the man’s throat.
“That’s right, Willie,” Chuck said, louder and more deliberately than he should have. “Nobody knows anything for sure.”
The kid started crying louder, loud enough for everyone to hear.
“Now, look what you did,” Willie said to Chuck. The shop grew quiet, except for the sobs of the young man.
Frank sighed. He knew it was a mistake to even open his mouth.
“They’re still alive,” Frank said quietly.
All the eyes in the place turned to him. Willie stopped and looked at Frank in the mirror.
“What do you mean?” Chuck asked.
Frank glanced up at him in the mirror.
“In most cases, they don’t eliminate the victims,” Frank said slowly, loud enough for the crying kid and the others to hear. “The kidnappers want their money, and they’ll do anything to get it. Getting a call is actually good news—six days without a phone call usually means it’s not a kidnapping. Usually means something much worse.”
The barber shop somehow grew even more silent. Frank could hear traffic passing outside, and the ticking of the clock on the wall.
Chuck spoke up again. “But, why two calls?”
Frank shrugged.
“Not sure. But a second call, set up like that—that’s a good sign,” Frank said. “Kidnappers know they’re going to be taped, so the girls are probably still alive. At least, the phone call greatly improves the chances of them being alive.”
Willie nodded, eyeing Frank differently.
“That’s good,” Willie said. “You know about this kind of stuff?”
Frank could hear the curiosity in his voice—and the concern. Frank knew immediately what the old black man was thinking: Who is this stranger? And why does he know so much about kidnappings?
“Yeah, I do.” Frank sighed. “Unfortunately. I’m an ex-cop. Used to investigate them.”
“Really?” Chuck said.
Frank nodded.
Willie started back on Frank’s hair, but he was going slower now, taking his time. After a minute, he spoke up again. “OK, what’s going to happen next?”
“Not sure,” Frank said. “But if the Bureau’s involved, they will help with the ransom demand. Work with the family, pull the money together. People usually can’t lay their hands on large amounts of cash quickly, so the Bureau assists.” Frank could see Willie listening intently.
Frank turned to the young man who had been sobbing. He was quiet now but still had his head down.
“Then there will be an exchange of some sort,” Frank said. “After that, hopefully, the girls come home.”
“Huh,” Willie said, laughing. “Not sure about that, my friend. I don’t think they’re coming home.”
Frank looked up at the reflection of Willie in the mirror. Willie stopped trimming for a moment and looked at him.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Willie continued. “You really investigated stuff like this?”
Frank nodded.
“What are the chances the girls are OK?” Chuck asked.
Frank glanced at the sobbing kid again.
“Well, I’d say 80-20 right now they’re alive.”
The kid glanced up, his eyes red.
“Really?” the kid asked.
Frank nodded.
He should’ve never opened his mouth.
“Yeah, I think so,” Frank continued. He thought about it for a moment. “But I have to be honest. Based on my experience, those numbers will start to drop quickly, as soon as the ransom is delivered.”
The kid smiled. It wasn’t really a smile, more of a grateful nod.
Frank expected more questions, but the barbers both moved on to another topic of conversation—some kind of big downtown construction project that was coming up next summer or the year after that would shut down the whole downtown. After a few minutes, Frank was done. The hair was trimmed and tidy, and he looked ten years younger. Combined with the shave from this morning, he was looking almost presentable.
When Willie removed the barber cloth, Frank stood and fished in his wallet, taking out enough money to cover the haircut and a tip. Frank thanked Willie, but he could feel all eyes in the place on him. They were all probably wondering if Frank would say anything else about the kidnapping case. But Frank didn’t have anything to add. He wasn’t involved and didn’t want to be.
So, instead of bullshitting them or giving them false hope or making something up to make them all feel better, he did what he’d been trying to do lately—not lead people on. Frank nodded to Willie and Chuck and the others, and left.
On his way out, the little bell above the door jingled brightly. The sound was out of place, not matching in any way his somber mood.
They were in the Martin’s living room.
Chief King looked down at the legal pad on the ornate coffee table in front of him. He always took all of his case notes on the pads. Yellow, lined. Not that big legal size but the regular, 8 1/2 by 11 size. It was a habit he’d picked up early in his career: write it all down, no matter how trivial. You never knew what detail would break a case open.
But Chief King wasn’t feeling too confident about this case.
Agent Ted Shale, the kid from the Bureau, had gotten here early and set up the phone-tracing equipment, although Chief King had needed to step in and help with some of the connections. Clearly, this was the first time the young agent had set it up on his own. He was “book smart,” as they used to say, usually about someone who didn’t have a lick of common sense.
So Chief King and the others sat in the Martin’s expansive living room, waiting. Large, framed photos of beautiful landscapes decorated the walls, and, above the huge fireplace, a heavy wooden mantle was covered with photos of the family in a variety of exotic locales. In most, little Charlie could be seen at various ages, enjoying a day at Cooper’s Mill Pool or riding a horse. In one frame, Charlie wore an oversized hard hat, jauntily tipped to one side; she was evidently visiting a construction site with her father, who smiled in the picture with her.
Glenda’s cell phone sat in the middle of the ornate coffee table, cords running from the bottom of the phone for power and into the FBI equipment, ready to run the trace. Everyone in the room was seated and staring at the cell phone, except for the FBI kid, who’d wandered off somewhere. He’d probably gone off to find a bathroom in the Martin’s huge home and gotten lost. Or he’d been mesmerized by something shiny and King wouldn’t find him for hours. The house was ridiculously large.
Either way, Ted was out of his hair.
Not that the kid was making things worse. He just wasn’t helping out at all or bringing anything to the table. King had expected more when he’d finally taken the Dayton PD’s advice and called in the Bureau.
King glanced at his notepad. He had four pages of notes just from this morning. That went along with another hundred and thirty sheets of notes, reports and assessments and interviews with half of the town of Cooper’s Mill.
So far, the case just didn’t add up.
This was a great family, known by everyone in the community. Friendly, good neighbors, good people, with only a few enemies.
Nick Martin was a local high school football hero. He ran one of the most successful companies in town and was on the City Council, for Christ’s sake. Glenda sat on a half-dozen charity boards and volunteered at the local farmers’ market.
As far as King could tell, they had very few enemies. They were rich, of course, and that made them a target, along with Nick’s recent actions on City Council. He’d been voted in on a budget-cutting platform, and he’d taken to streamlining the city’s finances. And some people had been let go. But those folks had been interviewed, along with everyone else they could think of. A few hurt feelings, sure, but nothing criminal. It just didn’t make sense.
It was how the girls had disappeared that really bothered Chief King.
He’d been a cop in Cooper’s Mill for twenty-two years, eight as the Chief. He’d risen up through the ranks from a dumbass patrolman. He’d seen a lot of small-town crime, most involving domestic disputes and petty drug charges. Being close to Dayton, he’d seen some bigger cases as well, mostly drugs passing through here on the way to somewhere important. Cooper’s Mill had only two murders over past the two decades, but plenty of drug arrests and OVIs. Last year, the department even shut down a rinky-dink escort service some local couple had been running out of their apartment.
But this was the first kidnapping. They’d had false alarms before, but they’d always turned out to be some kid sneaking off to go to a party. This was a real kidnapping. The girls had been taken in broad daylight, walking to school. But there had been no witnesses.
None.
In a town the size of Cooper’s Mill, it just didn’t seem possible. It seemed like the switchboard got twenty calls a day from “snoopy neighbors,” the cop’s best friend: somebody “suspicious” was walking in front of the library, or a car was weaving in and out of their lane on the stretch of interstate highway that ran through the city limits. Once a week, someone called in thinking they’d heard a gunshot. Cooper’s Mill was a small, close-knit community, and that meant people had their eyes open all the time. Some were looking out for others, and some were simply vindictive neighbors, quick to “tattle.” Either way, it helped the cops. And people from outside of town stood out like sore thumbs, and any wrongdoing, or even the suspicion of wrongdoing, was quickly reported. In fact, most of the crime in town involved OVIs at the local bars, and the majority of those cases were drinkers from other local towns, like Troy or Vandalia or West Milton.
Someone must have seen what happened that morning. It was broad daylight, on a school morning. So why hadn’t anyone called?
King shook his head and wondered what he should do about the FBI. King had called the FBI for assistance but, for some reason, the Bureau had decided to send a less-than-senior special agent. To King, the kid had looked like he was fresh out of the Academy and wasn’t yet sure which end of the gun was dangerous. But Ted had arrived and redirected some of the searches, redeploying the volunteers and police officers. Not knowing a thing about Cooper’s Mill and the surrounding terrain, he’d gone by the book and started from the middle, working his way out.
King didn’t have the heart to tell him he’d already searched all those areas in the first 24 hours after the girls had disappeared. If the Bureau wanted to follow procedure, he didn’t want to confuse the kid with a little thing like logic.
Ted had also sat with Nick Martin and poured through their finances, but King didn’t think it had helped. The kid was too green to catch anything the CMPD would’ve missed on their investigation. But now that it had gone from a missing persons case to a kidnapping—yesterday’s call to the mother’s cell phone had been brief and to the point—King was wishing they’d sent someone with a little more experience.
“Will they call?” the mother, Glenda, asked. She was sitting on the couch, one hand gripping a pillow in her lap. The other hand was clenched in a fist at her chest. “They were supposed to call.”
“They’ll call,” Nick said quietly from the other side of the room. The Chief noticed again that the husband wasn’t sitting next to his wife, comforting her. It was the third or fourth time King had noticed the distance, all during earlier interviews. Interesting. He jotted it down—you never knew—and stood, walking around the room again. It felt like he was spending all of his time in this room, with these people, instead of out working the case.
He looked around the room—there were many pictures on the walls and expensive stuff sitting around. The entire home was also decorated with stuff for Halloween, down to the pumpkins on the front porch.
“Where’s the nanny?” the Chief asked.
Glenda looked up at him. Her eyes were puffy and red.
“She was really upset,” Glenda said. “We gave her the day off.”
“Has she called to check in?” the Chief asked.
“No,” Nick shook his head. “I told her I would call her if we heard anything.”
That was interesting—the nanny had already been interviewed, of course, but Chief King would have thought the nanny would have wanted to be here for the call. He was making a note of it, when there was a knock at the front door.
Deputy Peters, one of the patrolmen stationed at the house, left the room to answer it. King heard mumbled voices and then Peters came into the room and called the Chief over.
“Chief, it’s Ken Meredith.”
Great, King thought.
“I got it.” King went to the door and pulled it open.
Ken ran CM-TV, the local public TV station. People were always confusing it with CMTV, the country music TV station on cable, and Ken could be very sensitive about that, and about the town not supporting the local station enough. He was always trying to put on interesting programming, to no avail.
CM-TV broadcast out of the third floor of the Monroe Township building downtown, a building that used to hold a downtown theater until it had been converted to offices in the 1970s. Current tenants included the local Chamber of Commerce. The broadcast facilities for CM-TV sit in the old balcony. In fact, there was a particular door, hidden behind the set of their semimonthly local news show, that opened onto the cavernous space above the offices thirty feet below.
“Hey Chief,” Ken asked quietly, leaning in and almost hitting the Chief with his camera. Ken’s voice was low, conspiratorial. King noticed his face was sweaty. “Can I film the ransom call?”
Behind him, across the lawn in the driveway, were three satellite trucks from local TV stations. Chief King saw a couple of the reporters talking, including that rotund fellow from Channel 4, Dale Scott. Chief King recognized him from the escort case last year, which had made the local news for almost a week straight. He’d gotten a lot of practice giving press conferences and had gotten to know a lot of the local press. Another reporter was working on her makeup in the side mirror of one of the trucks.
Chief King shook his head.
“Ken, we talked about this,” Kind said. “You can’t film that, or the family, unless they want to do interviews or speak to the press. And you have to stop sneaking into the police station. It’s completely inappropriate for you to be—”
“It’s public information, what happens in the station,” Ken answered, adjusting the camera on his shoulder.
“No, it’s not,” King said. “We’re conducting an investigation.” King could see that Meredith was completely wired, shaking like one of those little dogs that shakes all the time when they’re cold.
“After the call, you’re just going to come out and tell the media what happened,” Meredith said, his eyes red. “Wouldn’t it make it easier to just have me film it?”
Sergeant Graves, King’s third-in-command, walked up the sidewalk, passing Meredith. Graves smiled at King and made a face that said something like, “I’m sorry for what you’re having to put up with,” then headed inside.
King looked at the man with the camera and shook his head.
“No, Ken. You can’t film the phone call,” King said, as forcefully as he dared. “It’s sensitive, and we’ll probably be negotiating.”
Ken’s face fell. He wasn’t good at taking rejection. The same thing had happened last year, when Meredith had wanted special access for the escort case, and King had said ‘no.’
But then Meredith had a thought and started literally jumping up and down.
“OH! Can I film this part, where we’re talking?” Ken lifted the video camera and flicked it on, but the Chief put his hand on the lens and pulled the camera slowly back down.
“No, Ken,” King said. “You need to calm down. Back on the Red Bull?”
Ken started to say something but looked at the other reporters.
“I just wanted an edge.”
King shook his head. “You know how you get.”
Meredith nodded.
The Chief patted Ken on the shoulder. “It’s okay, just do your best. Look, I gotta get back inside. I’ll let you know what we learn,” he said and turned, shutting the door behind him.
King walked slowly back through the expansive foyer, shaking his head. This town was full of “interesting” people, that was certain. He took his time, looking at a collection of photos in frames on a long, low table that ran along one wall. When the call came, if it ever did, they would let him know.
Many pictures of Nick and Glenda and little Charlie, along with a few more: Nick Martin being sworn in as a city councilman, his hand on a Bible with the Mayor, Bill Hendrickson, administering the oath. Nick and Glenda on a vacation somewhere snowy. Nick and another guy golfing; it looked like Matt Lassiter, Nick’s business partner. Another one of Nick and Matt, this time in Vegas.
There were several of Nick with different groups of serious-looking people in suits, posing at groundbreaking ceremonies. They all had those ridiculous golden shovels you always saw, digging into little fake plots of dirt. Glenda in New York with a group of friends, holding a beer and grinning in front of a limo. And one of Nick and Glenda on a beach, much younger. They looked happy.
King walked back into the living room. He’d seen all those pictures in the files, of course, but looking at them on the table and how they were arranged, it told you how important they were to the family. And that wasn’t conveyed in a simple stack of copies that he’d been through. Maybe he needed to rethink some of their procedures.
The Bureau guy had returned and was fiddling with the wiretap equipment again. King hoped that he didn’t mess something up or accidentally unplug an important wire.
Sergeant Graves had found a chair and was waiting. He nodded at King again. Graves was good. King wanted him to sit in on the call, because the man never missed anything.
The Chief nodded back and walked over to the chair in the living room and, just as he sat down, the cell phone on the table in front of them rang loudly, making Glenda jump.
The Bureau kid hopped up and flicked on the equipment. The Chief was glad to see he’d returned in his absence. The guy was trying, at least. But Chief King was also certain that, when this case was over, the kid would have contributed exactly nothing to the outcome.