Blaze

needed, of his strength and brutality.

Then, at 4:30 PM on that gray day, SAC Albert Sterling got a call from Nancy Moldow.

As soon as Sterling and his partner, Bruce Granger, stepped into the Baby Shoppe, Nancy Moldow said: “There’s something wrong with your picture. The man you want has a big hole in the middle of his forehead.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sterling said. “We’re holding that back.”

Her eyes got round. “So he won’t know that you know.”

“That’s correct.”

She gestured to the young fellow standing next to her. He was wearing a blue nylon duster, a red bowtie, and a thrilled look. “This is Brant. He helped that — that — him out with the things he bought.”

“Full name?” Agent Granger asked the kid in the blue duster. He opened his notebook.

The stockboy’s adam’s apple went up and down like a monkey on a stick. “Brant Romano. Sir. That guy was driving a Ford.” He named the year with what Sterling deemed to be a high degree of confidence. “Only it wasn’t blue, like it says in the paper. It was green.”

Sterling turned to Moldow. “What did this man buy, ma’am?”

She actually laughed a little. “My laws, what didn’t he. All baby things, of course, that’s what we sell here. A crib, a cradle, a changing table, clothes — the works. He even bought a single place serving.”

“Do you have a complete list?” Granger asked.

“Of course. I never suspected he was up to something awful. He actually seemed like a nice enough man, although that dented place in his forehead — that hole—”

Granger nodded sympathetically.

“And he didn’t seem terribly bright. But bright enough to fool me, I guess. He said he was buying things for a little nephew, and silly Nan believed him.”

“And he was big.”

“My laws, a giant! It was like being with a — a—” She trilled nervous laughter. “A bull in a baby shop!”

“How big?”

She shrugged. “I’m five-feet-four, and I only came up to his ribs . That would make him—”

“You probably won’t believe this,” said Brant the stockboy, “but I thought he had to be, like, six-seven. Maybe even six-eight.”

Sterling prepared to ask a final question. He had saved it for last because he was almost sure it would lead to a dead end.

“Mrs. Moldow, how did this man pay for his purchases?”

“Cash,” she said promptly.

“I see.” He looked at Granger. It was the answer they had expected.

“You should have seen all the cash he had in his wallet!”

“Spent most of it,” Brant said. “He tipped me five, but by then the cupboard was mostly, like, bare.”

Sterling ignored this. “And since it was a cash purchase, you don’t have any record of the man’s name.”

“No. No record. Hager’s will get around to putting in security cameras in a few years, I suppose—”

“Centuries,” said Brant. “This place is, like, cheap to the max.”

“Well, then,” Sterling said, flipping his notebook closed, “we’ll be going. But I want to give you my card in case you think of anyth—”

“I do happen to know his name,” Nancy Moldow said.

They both turned back to her.

“When he opened his wallet to take out that big stack of money, I saw his driver’s license. I remember the name partly because that kind of sale is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, but mostly because it was such a… a stately name. It didn’t seem to fit him. I remember thinking that a man like him should be named Barney or Fred. You know, like on The Flintstones.”

“What was the name?” Sterling asked.

“Clayton Blaisdell. In fact, I think it was Clayton Blaisdell, Jr.”

By five-thirty that evening, they had their man tabbed. Clayton Blaisdell, Jr., aka Blaze, had been popped twice, once for assault and battery against the headmaster of the state home where the kid was living — a place called Hetton House — and once more, years later, for bunco and fraud. A suspected accomplice, George Thomas Rackley, aka Rasp, had gotten off because Blaze wouldn’t testify against him.

According to police files, Blaisdell and Rackley had been a team for at least eight years before Blaisdell’s fall on the bunco rap, which had been a religious con just a little too complex for the big boy’s limited mental talents. At South Portland Correctional, he had taken an IQ test and scored low enough to be placed in a category called “borderline restricted.” In the margin, someone had written, in big red letters: RETARDED.

Sterling found the details of the con itself quite amusing. In the gag, there was a big man in a wheelchair (Blaisdell) and a little guy pushing him who introduced himself to marks as the Rev. Gary Crowell (almost certainly Rackley). The Rev. Gary (as he styled himself) claimed to be raising money for a revivalist swing through Japan. If the marks — mostly old ladies with a little stashed in the bank — proved hard to convince, the Rev. Gary performed a miracle. He caused the big guy in the wheelchair to walk again, through the power of Jesus.

The circumstances of the arrest were even more amusing. An octogenarian named Arlene Merrill got suspicious and called the police while the Rev. Gary and his “assistant” were in the living room. Then she walked back to the living room to talk to them until the police arrived.

The Rev. Gary smelled it and took off. Blaisdell stayed. In his report, the arresting officer wrote, “Suspect said he did not flee because he had not been healed yet.”

Sterling considered all this and decided that there were two kidnappers, after all. At least two. Rackley had to be in on it with him, a guy as dumb as Blaisdell sure hadn’t pulled this thing off alone.

He picked up the phone, made a call. A few minutes later he got a callback that surprised him. George Thomas “Rasp” Rackley had died the previous year. He had been found knifed in the area of a known crap-game on the Portland docks.

Shit. Someone else, then?

Someone running the big lug the way Rackley no doubt once had?

Just about had to be, didn’t there?

By seven that night, a statewide all-points — what would become known as a BOLO a few years later — was out on Clayton Blaisdell, Jr.

By that time Jerry Green of Gorham had discovered his Mustang had been stolen. The car was on State Police hot-sheets forty minutes or so later.

Around that same time, Westbrook PD gave Sterling the number of a woman named Georgia Kingsbury. Ms. Kingsbury had been reading the evening paper when her son looked over her shoulder, pointed to the police sketch, and asked, “Why is that man from the laundrymat in the paper? And how come that doesn’t show the hole in his head?”

Mrs. Kingsbury told Sterling: “I took one look and said oh my God.”

At 7:40, Sterling and Granger arrived at the Kingsbury home. They showed mother and son a copy of Clayton Blaisdell, Jr.’s mug shot. The copy was blurry, but the Kingsburys’ identification was still immediate and positive. Sterling guessed that once you saw Blaisdell, you remembered him. That this hulk was the last person Norma Gerard had seen in her lifelong home made Sterling sick with anger.

“He smiled at me,” the Kingsbury boy said.

“That’s nice, son,” Sterling said, and ruffled his hair.

The boy flinched away. “Your hand is cold,” he said.

In the car Granger said, “You think it’s odd that the big boss would send a guy like that shopping for the kid? A guy so easy to remember?”

When Sterling considered, he did think it a little odd, but Blaisdell’s shopping spree suggested something