“You really think he’d do that?”
“Absolutely. You rescued this baby and deserve the credit, not him.”
“Let’s be honest, here. You rescued him, Jack.”
I handed Burrell the baby. “The official version of events is that you found him. I was along for the ride. Got it?”
Burrell shot me a funny look. She was honest to a fault, which could be a real character flaw when you were rising up the ranks of the police department.
“Whatever you say,” she said.
I drove Burrell’s Mustang to Broward General Medical Center with Burrell in the backseat cradling Martin. I normally paid scant attention to the insane traffic that defined Broward’s highways, but today there was more at stake, and I put Burrell’s flasher on the dash and turned it on. The spinning blue light had a magical effect, with cars slowing down to safe and normal speeds. A block from the hospital, I glanced at Burrell in the mirror.
“You ready?” I asked.
“For what?” she replied.
“My guess is, Jimmie and Lonna Wakefield have told everyone in the hospital the good news. It probably leaked out, which means the hospital is swarming with reporters. You’re about to become everyone’s favorite cop.”
“Is that a problem?”
“It all depends on how you handle it. Have you ever held a news conference before?”
Burrell shook her head.
“I’ll give you some pointers. Make sure you have the parents with you, plus the hospital staff. You want smiling faces standing behind you. This is a joyous event. The baby’s fine, the parents are happy, life is wonderful.”
“Make it into a celebration,” Burrell said.
“Exactly. Also make sure that you have the reporters’ credentials checked before you start. There are a lot of nuts out there, and you don’t want someone lobbing a crazy question at you, especially if there are cameras rolling.”
“No nuts.”
“That’s right. Now, here’s the tricky part. How do you talk about Teresa Rizzoli? The reporters will want to know how you plan to prosecute her.”
“Why is that tricky? She stole a baby.”
“You still don’t want to demonize her. There are plenty of women who can’t have children who can empathize with her situation.”
“Don’t speak about her like she’s a criminal.”
“Exactly. Tell them she’s a confused woman, and that police psychologists will be dealing with her. I wouldn’t mention the charges she’s facing, or that she might do hard time.”
“What about her husband pulling the gun on us?”
“I wouldn’t mention that, either.”
“Keep it upbeat, huh?”
“Happy time,” I said.
I pulled into the hospital’s emergency entrance in the back of the building, and threw the Mustang into park. Getting out, I walked around and opened Burrell’s door. She smiled at me with her eyes as she climbed out with the baby.
“One more thing,” I said.
“What’s that?” she said.
Burrell’s detective’s badge was still clipped to her purse. I removed it, shined it on my sleeve, then pinned it on her chest so it was in plain sight.
“Just so everyone knows who’s in charge,” I said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I parked and went inside the hospital. There was a pharmacy on the first floor, and I strapped myself into the free blood pressure machine to check my blood pressure and pulse. I’d had guns pointed in my face before, and I knew how it affected me.
My blood pressure and pulse were both sky high. I went to my car, popped James Taylor’s greatest hits into my tape deck, and started petting my dog. After a while, I started to feel better. Then my cell phone rang.
“I just wrapped up my news conference,” Burrell said. “You should come inside. The Wakefields want to thank you.”
“Tell them I’ll take a rain check,” I said.
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s another little boy who needs to be rescued.”
“I’ll be out in five minutes.”
I drove Burrell to the Village Inn to retrieve my car, and neither of us spoke a word. Then I followed her to police department headquarters on Andrews Avenue. Finding a parking space, I rolled down the windows for my dog.
“I’ve had every detective from Missing Persons tracking down the Armwood hotels in Fort Lauderdale,” Burrell said as we crossed the lot. “I didn’t forget our deal.”
“I know you didn’t,” I said.
Burrell had me cleared at the reception desk, and we headed upstairs to the War Room on the top floor. The War Room was used as a communications center during emergencies like hurricanes and wildfires, and was outfitted with a bank of telephones and a wall of high-resolution TVs. It also had a panoramic view of the county. Although the building was smoke-free, people still occasionally smoked in the War Room, and a recent cigarette lingered in the air as we entered. Standing around an oval table were the six detectives from my old unit.
“Good afternoon,” Burrell said.
They broke out of their huddle. A detective named Tom Manning was holding a remote. He pressed a button, and on every TV appeared a clip of Burrell from the news conference. The detectives broke into applause.
“Thank you very much,” Burrell said. “Now, I’d like to hear what progress you’ve made tracking down Armwood hotels.”
A sunburned detective named Bob Smith stepped forward. Smith was the first detective I’d ever hired, and he knew how to get things done. He pointed at the map of south Florida spread across the oval table. The map was covered in red thumbtacks, and there were a lot of them.
“We were in the process of identifying all the Armwood Guest Suite Hotels in south Florida when you walked in,” he said.
“How many have you found?” I asked.
“Ninety,” Smith replied.
The number gave me pause. Tim Small had indicated there were forty Armwood hotels in south Florida. Searching forty hotels for a kidnapped child was manageable; searching ninety wasn’t.
“I was told there were less,” I said.
“It’s an inflated number,” Smith said.
“What do you mean, inflated?” Burrell asked.
“At one time, Armwood owned forty hotels in south Florida,” Smith explained. “Then their parent company bought another chain of hotels called Leisure Inns, which were quite big. When Armwood got sold, the Armwood properties and Leisure Inns were listed on the bill of sale under the Armwood name. We’re working off the bill of sale, because it’s the only record we could find.”
“So fifty of those thumbtacks are Leisure Inns, only you have no way of knowing which ones,” I said.
“That’s right,” Smith said.
