Stolen Away

to Broadway bootlegger Mickey Rosner, Lindbergh was explaining to the latter just who and what I was. “Mr. Heller is our liaison man with the Chicago Police.”

“The Chicago Police,” Rosner said, smirking. Then with a straight face, he said to me, “You think Capone’s offer is for real?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “What do you ‘t’ink,’ Mickey?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Capone’s a king in his world. What he says generally goes. I think the Colonel should maybe pay attention to the Big Fellow.”

Mickey didn’t say which colonel he meant.

Lindbergh nodded to Rosner in dismissal, and the little bootlegger sat down and returned to his reading.

The dog had stopped barking, but resumed when he saw me. Lindbergh said, “Shush, Wahgoosh,” and the dog fell silent.

“What the hell is ‘Wahgoosh’?”

“The pooch’s name,” Lindbergh said, with that shy midwestern kid’s smile of his.

“Oh,” I said, as if that made sense.

“You’d have to ask Whately what it means. Wahgoosh was Oliver’s dog, but we’ve kind of adopted the little yapper.”

“Colonel,” I said, “do you really think it’s advisable to have the likes of Rosner around? That no-account bum could be in on the crime…”

“I know,” Lindbergh said, gently. “That’s one of the reasons why he is around.”

“Oh,” I said again.

Lindbergh opened the front door and led me outside into the chilly overcast afternoon; he nodded to the trooper on guard at the door. Lindy hadn’t bothered with a topcoat, so I didn’t say anything, but it was goddamn cold. I followed him across the yard to the left, back toward where his study would be.

We walked directly outside his study window, below the second-floor corner window, which faced southeast. He pointed up.

“That’s where they went in,” he said, meaning the kidnappers.

“Why isn’t this area roped off?” I said, looking at the ground, hands tucked under my arms. “Was it ever roped off?”

“No,” he said.

“Weren’t there footprints?”

There certainly were now. Hundreds of them. Grass might never grow on this ground.

Lindbergh nodded, breath smoking. “There was one substantial footprint—belonging, apparently, to a man. It seemed to be that of a moccasin, or a shoe with a sock or perhaps burlap around it. There were also the footprints of a woman.”

“A woman? So there were two of them, at least.”

“So it would seem.”

“Have the moulage impressions been sent to Washington?”

Lindbergh narrowed his eyes. “Moulage impressions?”

“Plaster casts of the footprints. Say what you want about J. Edgar’s boys, they have a hell of a lab. For one thing, they’ll tell you exactly what that man was wearing—moccasin or potato sack or glass slipper.”

“Colonel Schwarzkopf’s man took photographs, not plaster impressions. Was that a mistake?”

I sighed. “Is Bismarck a herring?”

Lindbergh shook his head wearily. “I know mistakes were made that night. It’s possible plaster casts weren’t taken simply because the reporters trampled this area before there could be.”

That was still the fault of the coppers in charge; but I’d said enough on this subject.

“Look, Colonel. We can’t do anything about mistakes past. The early hours of this case were understandably a jumble.”

Of course, a good cop knows that the early hours of any major felony investigation are the most important, the time during which you allow no mistakes. But I didn’t say that, either.

“What we can do,” I said, “is not make any more of ’em. Mistakes, I mean.”

He nodded gravely. “Would you like to see the nursery?”

“First, I’d like to see the ladder they used. Is it still around?”

It ought to be in an evidence locker in Trenton, but with the command post here, I figured it was worth asking.

He nodded. “It’s in the garage. I’ll have the troopers bring it around. Excuse me for a few moments.”

Lindbergh loped off; he had a gangling gait, and seemed slightly stoop-shouldered—as if he were embarrassed to be so tall, or so famous. Or perhaps it was the weight of it all—from the kidnapping itself, to living out this tragedy in the center ring of a goddamn circus.

Despite the trampled ground, blurring any footprints, there still remained in the moist clay, near the side of the house, the indentations of the feet of the ladder. The indentations were below, but to the right of, the window of