Hocus (5 page)

“Irene.”

“Okay, Irene, just call me Tom or Cassidy — either one will do. I don’t think anybody but my mama calls me Thomas these days. Anyway, this doesn’t make you an asshole. In fact, after listening to some of the stories the captain told me about you, I would have been disappointed if you didn’t try a stunt like this.”

“Glad to give you the satisfaction of being right. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going into the building.”

“Certainly,” he said, and started to follow me.

“Wait a minute. The Las Piernas Police Department is not invited to come along.”

“You aren’t safe here,” he said, moving to block my way. “If I could figure out what you were likely to do, so could someone else.”

“Frank’s the one in danger, not me.” I dodged around him, started for the building again. “Why should anyone care if I….”

I came to a halt.

“What is it?” he asked sharply.

“Over there,” I said, pointing to a Volvo parked in along the back wall of the building, away from the other cars. “Frank’s car. He’s here!”

I started running toward it.

“Wait!” Cassidy shouted, grabbing on to me and nearly causing us both to fall to the pavement.

“Let go of me!”

“Irene, please wait.” We had drawn some attention by then. A couple of the truck drivers were looking our way. I stood still. Cassidy pulled out his badge holder and held it over his head. “Y’all just go on about your business. The lady’s fine.”

They hesitated. “I’m all right,” I called out. “Really.”

Slowly they left.

“Now, let’s go take a look,” Cassidy said. “I’m anxious to see it, too, but I want us to go about this cautiously. Together. And we aren’t going to touch that car. You with me on this?”

I nodded.

“Let’s go, then.”

The closer we got to the Volvo, the worse I felt about it being there. Frank wouldn’t drive to the newspaper in the middle of the night. He would come home. If he didn’t want to go to the house for some reason, if he were in trouble and needed my help, this was the last place he’d try to meet me.

“Easy,” Cassidy said. “Take it easy. Stay back here a minute.”

He crouched down and slowly moved up to the car. He peered inside, then swore under his breath and stood up. He covered his eyes with one hand.

I hurried over, looked into the car.

Empty.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, leaning to take a closer look. “Why are you so upset?”

“Don’t touch it,” he said. Then, standing behind me, he gently took my shoulders and crouched down again, moving me with him. He pointed up through the rear passenger window. “The mirror.”

Something was written on the rearview mirror in small, neat letters. It looked as if the writer had used a sharp-tipped black felt pen. The parking lot wasn’t brightly lit, but there was enough light to read the words:

HOCUS HAS NEWS. WE KNOW WHERE TO FIND YOU.

“Hocus? Oh, no. No….”

“Shh, shh. Hush. We don’t know a thing, really.”

I looked at him in disbelief. “We know he’s been taken by Hocus! We know he arrested two of them for conspiracy to commit murder!”

“These fools are getting too big for their britches,” he said easily. “That’s how Frank caught on to them in the first place. Now, we’re going back to my car, and I’m going to call for some help.”

“Shouldn’t we… shouldn’t we look in the trunk?”

“You have keys to the Volvo with you?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you give them to me?” When I hesitated, he said, “You know that Hocus has used explosives, right?”

I nodded.

“I think we should wait until the bomb squad gets here and checks the car out first. It would be just like Hocus to think it was funnier than hell to blow the damned newspaper to kingdom come.”

“But if Frank is in there….”

“If you’re going to get locked in a trunk, a Volvo’s one of the better ones to be locked in. They have a hole for skis. He’ll have plenty of air. Trust me.”

Although I had seen the ski slot in the trunk, I thought he was probably bluffing about the air supply. It didn’t matter. “If he’s in there, Cassidy, he’s dead anyway.”

“Don’t go talking that kind of talk, now.”

“I don’t think he’s dead. He’s alive.”

“You got a feeling about that?” he said, steering me toward his car.

I did, but hell if I was going to talk to him about it. “No, logic. Someone went to a lot of trouble today. They lured my husband out to Riverside, to a house the police here knew he was going to. They took him from there, then brought his car all the way back here. They left a message for me in his car, left his car in a place where I was likely to find it. Perhaps not this soon, but by Monday morning.” I looked up along the roof of the Wrigley Building, which houses the
Express.
“They undoubtedly knew the security cameras for the parking lot wouldn’t catch their faces on videotape if they parked along the back wall of the building. If they were just going to execute Frank for arresting their leader, they wouldn’t have needed to go to so much trouble. And they’d be crowing about it by now.”

He stopped and studied me for a moment. “Not bad. I’m with you — Frank has value to them as a hostage. On the other hand, the violence by this group has been escalating, and they think of themselves as tricksters. If I think like a trickster, I say the car could be booby-trapped.”

When we reached his car I said, “That was you following me, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. Sorry if I scared you.”

He called Bredloe at home.

“I’m on a cellular phone, here, sir,” he began. “At her place of employment…. Yes, we can go into that later, on a land line. Her husband’s car is here in the parking lot, with a message from our prankster friends…. Yes…. I’d prefer not to go into the possibilities on an unsecured line, sir, but thought you’d want to get things rolling. I want to keep an eye on the car so that nobody bumps into it until your brother brings the dogs.”

There was a pause.

“Yes, sir. Exactly…. Thank you.”

As he started to dial another number I asked, “Bredloe’s brother is bringing dogs? What’s that all about?”

“A little code that we’ll have to stop using after tonight, I suppose…. The bomb squad is part of the sheriff’s department. They use dogs to sniff out explosives….” He spoke into the phone. “Hank? Get everything you can on the pranksters…. Yeah, I Know. Bredloe will help.”

I remembered my promise to Jack and asked Cassidy to pass word along to him that I was okay.

By the time he finished the call, a black-and-white pulled into the parking lot. Cassidy asked the officers to keep everyone away from the Volvo until the bomb squad arrived.

He turned to me. “You all right?”

I nodded.

“Let’s go into the building and use a phone in there, okay?”

The night security man was already quite excited because he had seen the cruiser pull into the lot. When Cassidy showed him his detective shield, the guard pulled in his stomach and started hitching up his belt.

Before he could snap a salute or sing the police auxiliary anthem, I told him to expect the parking lot to be besieged by law enforcement. He decided to call the editor, Winston Wrigley III.

Wrigley and I have a strained relationship in the best of times, and between two and three in the morning is never going to rank as one of the best of times. After a minute or two of listening to him bawl me out, I handed the phone over to Cassidy.

“Come on down,” Cassidy drawled, a little more heavily than usual, I thought, “but be careful. Y’all might get yourselves launched outta here like a roman candle. Up to you. I gotta get going now. I cain’t talk to you and keep your building from blowing up at the same time.”

When he hung up, the security man was bug-eyed. “Should I evacuate the building?”

“Probably be a good idea. The bomb squad will be here any minute now. In the meantime, maybe you could ask folks to stay away from that end of the parking lot.”

John Walters, who had recently been promoted to managing editor, arrived about the same time as the explosives experts did. His concern that subscribers would be unhappy if their morning papers were not on their driveways before breakfast time did not count for much with the bomb squad. He paced back and forth on the perimeter, where the delivery drivers and press operators waited.

John scowled every time he saw me, but he hadn’t spoken to me yet. I took that to mean that even if nothing was found in the car, there was bound to be at least one type of explosion that morning.

Cassidy ambled over to him, spoke with him for a moment, and John stopped pacing. He slumped a little, looking toward his shoes, but I doubted he could see them over the curve of his belly. He glanced back at me, but this time the look was different. Sympathy. An offering I refused by fixing my gaze on the car.

Since the only way to get sympathy from John was to have something really awful happen to you, I preferred seeing him upset. I wasn’t exactly cool and calm myself. Although we were some distance away, I could see that the explosives experts had their specially trained dogs out. The two animals worked in a team, cautiously sniffing the exterior of the car. One of the dogs showed some interest in the trunk, but when the handler brought over the other one, the two dogs moved along.

“If the dogs detect any kind of explosive, they signal it very clearly,” Cassidy said, now back at my side. “I don’t think they found anything just then.”

I nodded. As I watched the officers go through other checks, using mirrors on long extensions and other devices, I could feel the weight of each passing moment, every delay seeming to decrease the odds of finding Frank.

“Cut it out,” Cassidy said next to me.

“Cut what out?”

“You’re winding yourself up tighter than an eight-day clock.”

“Forgive me. I’m sure if your wife was missing and the bomb squad was inspecting her car while terrorists did as they pleased with her, you’d just be sitting around whistling Dixie.”

For a moment I imagined that I had made him angry. After putting up with his irritating calm, I’d have found it a refreshing change. But I was wrong — he smiled and looked away from me, an expression of private amusement on his face.

“Come on, Ms. Kelly,” he said, “they’re gonna let us take a look-see.”

We moved to the next barrier — yellow police tape surrounding the part of the parking lot where the Volvo stood.

The bomb squad was packing up, and Cassidy was directing the uniformed officers who had been working crowd control to let people back into the building. John was avoiding me for the moment, talking to the production and circulation managers, undoubtedly trying to figure out what this interruption was going to do to press and delivery schedules. Photographs, which had been taken at several points, were now taken from closer angles. A fingerprint technician was already dusting the door handles and other surfaces. Most of the attention was on the open trunk.

As we drew closer, my sense of dread became so acute that the trunk seemed to become a gaping maw, Jonah’s whale come to swallow me whole. Police interest of this kind was like John’s sympathy — it could not be associated with anything good.

Cassidy took hold of my elbow at some point; I guess I had slowed without realizing it. I heard voices around me, introductions, comments, even Cassidy’s drawling version of my name. He was repeating it.

But they were all far away. I was in an incomprehensible world, a world composed solely of the large, dark bloodstain on the carpet in the trunk of my husband’s car.

I
WAS ABLE TO AVOID FAINTING
or screaming or going into hysterics, but the tears refused all orders not to fall. Next to the stain, an orderly display of three items caught my eye: a pager, a cellular phone, a gun in a shoulder holster. I knew they were Frank’s even before Cassidy steered me away from the car and into the building.

The big marble-and-brass lobby was empty; the security guard was outside, engrossed in watching the police action. Cassidy seated me on a bench and asked for directions to the nearest vending machines. I managed to point the way. I sat there, trembling, hoping I could stop quivering before he came back. I couldn’t. He handed me a cup of hot coffee and made me drink it while he watched.

John came in, took in my tearstained face, and snapped, “Get her another cup of that stuff,” as if Cassidy were his to command. Cassidy didn’t make a fuss about it. The minute he stood up, John sat next to me, even took my hand and patted it in an awkward gesture of reassurance. I wasn’t reassured, but it was so weird to have John do something like that, I dried up.

“You going to be okay, Kelly?”

I nodded.

“Can I do anything for you?”

I shook my head.

“Mark’s here. I’ve asked him to cover this.”

“Keep him away from me,” I said, hating how shaky my voice sounded.

“But, Kelly—”

“I just can’t talk to him now, John. Maybe later.”

“Before deadline?”

I choked out a laugh.

“You don’t blame Mark for this, do you, Kelly?”

Did I? Maybe. It was wrong, I knew. But what if Mark’s story had triggered what happened? I thought of the bloodstain. No, I told myself, it’s wrong to blame Mark.

I closed my eyes tightly, because that was as close as I could get to being left alone. “Don’t make me sort this out right now, John. Please.”

“No need to pressure Ms. Kelly,” Cassidy said, causing me to look up again as he came back into the room. He handed me the cup of coffee, glanced over at John, and sighed. “I expected more of you, Mr. Walters.”

John rubbed a hand over his face. “I’ll talk to you later, Kelly.” He started up the stairs, then paused. “Are you going to be okay?” he asked again.

“Yes, don’t worry. I’ll be upstairs in a few minutes.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have let you see the car,” Cassidy said when John was out of earshot. “Bredloe will probably have my butt for that. I just figured it was easier to let you see the car now — otherwise I might find you breaking into the impound yard trying to get a look at it.”

“You were right,” I said. I sat up a little straighter, tried to make my voice steady when I asked, “What do you think that bloodstain means?”