goddamn day!”
His Honor let loose with a stapler this time.
“And we’re gonna stay on national TV until you find her body or her killer!”
“You mean kidnapper.”
“I mean killer. She’s dead just like that reporter said and you know it. Goddamnit, Paul, find this pervert!”
“Mayor, we’re rounding up every sex offender in the county but-”
A stiff fat finger in Ryan’s face: “No buts, Paul! Find him, arrest him, and get us off national TV! Or else!”
Paul Ryan exited the mayor’s office, imagining himself driving a golf cart with a flashing yellow light around a parking lot twelve hours a day and wondering what kind of retirement plan Wal-Mart offered its security guards.
“Do you have twenty-five million dollars in cash?” FBI Special Agent Eugene Devereaux asked the mother.
Without looking at him, she said, “My husband arranged a line of credit. He put up his stock. It’ll be worth a billion dollars in two days. We’ve got it.”
Before the mother’s image had faded from the TV screen, every fax machine in the command post was spitting out paper, every light on every phone was blinking, and a dozen federal agents were logging leads into the computer as fast as they could type:
“You saw her, in Houston?”
“You’re sure it was her? Where in Oklahoma?”
“Arkansas?”
“Louisiana?”
“Mexico? New Mexico the state or Mexico the country?”
Devereaux would personally review the computer’s analysis of the leads and determine which leads to follow, hoping in his heart they were legit but knowing in his head they were worthless calls from people after a piece of the reward, calling in to report every blonde girl they saw, hoping theirs might hit, like buying a lottery ticket.
He heard Agent Floyd’s voice: “Uh, no, ma’am, you can’t get any of the reward for being close. This isn’t horseshoes.”
And Agent Jorgenson’s: “And who is she with?… A man and woman?… And you’re in a grocery store in Abilene with them right now?… I hear someone saying ‘mommy.’ Is that the girl?… Well, ma’am, if the girl is calling the woman ‘mommy,’ maybe that’s her mother.”
Devereaux turned to the mother. “Well, Mrs. Brice, we’ve had almost five hundred sightings in the two hours since you offered the reward.” He was standing in the middle of the command post with the mother.
“Excellent.”
“No, ma’am, not really. At this rate, I won’t have the manpower to clear that many leads.”
The mother looked at Devereaux like she had told a joke and he was too dumb to get it.
“I don’t expect you to. Grace isn’t walking around some shopping mall somewhere-you think he bought her new shorts? If she’s alive, she’s with him. I offered the reward to pressure him to give her up. That’s the only chance we have to get her back alive, and you know it.”
Devereaux had to remind himself of his own rule: getting into a pissing contest with the mother wouldn’t put him one step closer to finding the girl or apprehending the abductor. And odds are, the child’s dead anyway.
“Her body, it is cold.”
Angelina Rojas stood five feet tall and weighed two hundred pounds. She was wearing a pink sweat suit. She had teased her hair into a nice tall mound atop her round face to which she had applied extra makeup. She wanted to look her best today.
Angelina lived and worked in the Little Mexico area of Dallas. Normally at this time on a Monday morning, she would be contacting the spirits of dead relatives of poor Mexicans or reading their futures in their palms or tarot cards. Angelina Rojas, el medium. She was a psychic. At least that’s what it said on her business card.
But yesterday she had opened the Sunday paper and seen the kidnapped girl’s picture on the front page; she had been drawn to the image. She had stared at the picture, then she had touched it. She had felt something and heard something. Something real this time. Something that scared her. “ La madre de Dios,” she had said. Mother of God.
So she had woken this morning, gotten dressed, and made Carlos put on a shirt and drive her out here. When they had arrived at the big gates, she explained the purpose of her visit to the guard, but he refused to let them in. She begged him to call Senora Brice. When he refused that also, Carlos said he was going to get out of the Chevy and kick his fat Anglo ass. The guard decided that making a phone call was a smarter move than having some Hispanic hombre in a low-rider pounding on him with his muscular left arm, the one with the tattoo of the Virgin Mary. So he called, but he got Senor Brice instead. He let them in.
Carlos had stayed in the car at the end of the street outside the police barricade; he was nervous due to the fact that he had immigrated to America via the Rio Grande just outside Laredo. She had then walked down the street and up to the front door of the house-it was as big as the office building she used to clean each night, before she had become a full-time psychic. Normally she insisted her clients pay her in cash up front; Angelina did not accept personal checks or credit cards, not that her clients had bank accounts or credit cards. But today she did not care about money. In fact, she did not want money. She just wanted to give them the girl’s message and get back home.
Angelina Rojas was afraid that she might really be psychic.
Now she was sitting in the kitchen across a table from Senor Brice and several other Anglos; her eyes were closed and she was clutching the girl’s white school blouse tightly to her face, trying to feel the child. Another cold chill ran through her considerable body, more intense than the first one. But it was not Angelina who was cold.
“Her body, it is very cold.”
“My daughter is not dead!”
Angelina opened her eyes to a woman she recognized from TV. The mother. She was very beautiful, even when angry, as now.
“No, Senora, she is not dead. She is cold. She is shivering.”
The mother rolled her eyes. “Oh, for God’s sake. We’d do better with a goddamn Ouija board. You’re just here for the reward.”
“No, Senora, I do not want your money. I am here because the girl is cold and because she calls out.”
The mother put her hands on her hips like Angelina’s Anglo landlord did when she was late with the rent money. “Really? And what does she call out for?”
“She calls out for someone named Ben.”
“Ben! Ben!”
Kate Brice is straining to see down the jetway at San Francisco International Airport; six-year-old John is standing next to her. It’s 1975 and Ben Brice is coming home. That damn war is finally over.
Passengers begin appearing in the jetway. Her eyes search the crowd for a green beret, but her mind is dreading a repeat of five years earlier in this same airport. They were walking down the concourse; Ben was wearing his uniform, pushing John in a stroller, and ignoring the whispered “baby killer” comments. A young man with long hair suddenly stepped in front of Ben and said, “My brother died in Vietnam because of officers like you!” Then he spat in Ben’s face. Ben grabbed the young man by the throat and pinned him to the wall, terrifying the young man but Kate more. She had never seen that Ben Brice before; his blue eyes were so dark. He could have
