A Child Is Missing (20 page)

The hermit glanced back, saw from the angle of the boy's head that he was napping. Damn, he thought. I'm doing something for someone. Who would have thought? Jo, if you're watching somewhere, look what I'm doing.

He kept a steady pace, deliberately going a little more slowly than his body wanted. He was saving his energy, just in case.

The weather was getting worse. It was borderline: cold enough, especially with the wind, and snowy enough to be dangerous—for anyone who didn't know the woods. The hermit knew the woods.

He was glad the boy hadn't pestered him too much about why he didn't just go into Long Creek if it was closer. How to tell a kid about fear and hate from a long time ago? How to make him understand? He couldn't. It didn't matter.

The first few miles, the hermit spotted a couple of deer. Running ahead of him; Wolf flushed several grouse from their hiding places beneath the evergreens. The dog barked as the birds exploded from cover, drumming the air with their wings as they darted away through the trees and snow.

Every few minutes, the hermit would stop and stand still. Seeing his master motionless, Wolf would trot back and stand next to him, ears high. The hermit was nervous: The man he'd seen in the night near the burial place had to be one of the kidnappers. And now that the boy was free, the man would probably come back, looking for the boy. To kill him?

Each time he stopped, the hermit heard only the sounds of the ground and the trees and, now and then, the birds and animals.

The snow kept coming, though the wind let up a little. Depending on where he was, high ground or low, he could see fifty to a hundred yards.

When he was hungry, the hermit took out a big piece of bread and a few pieces of meat. He chewed slowly, so he could still hear around him. He gave a piece of crust and part of a hunk of meat to Wolf.

Let the boy sleep. Blessings on you, little man—is that how the old poem went? Damn, I hope I didn't give him too much whiskey. Naw. He didn't seem to have a headache. He's just warm and happy, almost. I only wish he was safe.

The hermit ate an extra piece of bread, gave a nibble to the dog, and took the sled rope to press on again. It was then that he thought he heard something behind him. Wolf's ears went up like spikes. The dog looked in the direction of the sound. It had been like a branch snapping, but not from a deer.

The hermit breathed in and out slowly, straining to hear. There it was again, the snap of a branch. From a man's foot. Wolf growled deep in his throat.

“Shhh.” The hermit dragged the sled with the sleeping boy up onto a little rise and hunkered down under a big pine tree with Wolf next to him. “Shhh,” he commanded again, and with his hand he ordered the dog to lie low.

Snap. The noise was closer now, and suddenly there he was. The man stood in a little clearing about seventy-five yards back. Through the swirling snow, the hermit saw that the man wore camouflage clothes and carried a rifle. A hunter? Most of them were smart enough to wear bright orange or red. The hermit didn't even know whether it was deer season yet; he hadn't heard any rifle shots.

Maybe the man was hunting out of season. There were plenty of hunters like that, and the camouflage clothes would make it harder for game wardens to spot him.

Or maybe this was another kind of hunter—hunting him and the little boy.

As the hermit knelt and watched, the man stood still, looking all around. Then he looked down at the sled tracks and footprints of man and dog. Following us? Was he the same man? He could be, the hermit thought. He has the same height and build as the guy I saw in the dark. I think he does.

The man was studying the tracks, which were being erased by the wind and snow. He started walking again, toward the hermit's hiding place. The hermit shifted his position slightly to relieve one knee, and, as he moved, his shoulder brushed a bough, knocking loose some snow that plopped onto the sleeping boy.

“Daddy!” The boy awoke with a start. Wolf growled, then barked. In his wake-up terror, Jamie kicked and punched at the air, and the sled moved. It slid down the little rise, slowly and harmlessly, coming to a gentle stop only a few yards away—but in plain sight of the stranger with the rifle.

The hunter walked toward them, rifle at the ready. The hermit saw that the rifle had a telescopic sight.

The hermit had his own weapon ready, with a round in the chamber. The man was less than fifty yards away now, and for a moment the hermit wondered whether the thing to do was just to shoot him and be done with it.

NO.
He had never shot anyone, and there was no way to tell whether this was the guy he'd seen at the burial spot or just another poacher.

“Daddy!”

“Jamie, don't move! Stay down!”

Now the hunter stopped, looked straight at the hermit, and seemed to raise his rifle. The hermit brought his carbine to his shoulder, aimed to the stranger's left, and squeezed the trigger.

The noise of the shot echoed through the woods. Wolf barked, Jamie screamed, and the stranger seemed paralyzed in his tracks. In an instant, the hermit had chambered another round and was aiming at the man's chest.

The man backed up. His head was shaking and his mouth was open in disbelief.

“Get out of here!” the hermit shouted. “Get away, or the next one's right in your chest. I swear. The boy's staying with me.”

The stranger turned and ran, and the hermit changed his aim. This time, he fired behind the man, close enough for the snow to kick up near his heels.

The echo died away, and the hermit knelt next to the sled and the weeping boy. “He's gone, Jamie. No one's taking you away again. I promise.”

Twenty-one

Will slept badly: too much scotch and tension, not enough rest. When he awoke, he tried at once to call Jerry Graham. No answer.

Trying to ignore fleeting thoughts of Heather Casey, he dressed and showered quickly, grabbed a breakfast of toast and coffee, and went to the police station. There, he found more commotion than usual for so early in the morning. It was two hours before the normal time for a briefing on the kidnapping.

Something had happened—Will could tell that at once from the crowd of reporters, camera people, and technicians. Please, God, Will thought, don't let the kid be dead.

Will went with the crowd, down the corridor toward the briefing room. He spotted Jerry Graham coming the other way. “Jerry, what happened?”

“Glad you got here, Will. I would have sent for you in another few minutes.”

“Is the boy…?”

Graham leaned toward him and whispered. “We think the boy's been spotted, Will. Alive.”

And before Will could say anything, the FBI man was gone.

Chief Robert Howe sat at the long table, waiting for his audience to settle down. As the chief studied the gathering with thinly veiled contempt, Will studied him in turn: Yes, there was a strong resemblance between the chief and his brother, the surly detective (although he had been much less surly with Heather Casey, but then Heather Casey wasn't an outsider).

Jerry Graham sat next to the chief, waiting to be introduced and looking impatient.

God Almighty, Will thought. Why do we need a toastmaster here? Will felt like shouting what he had figured out the previous night. He thought it would be an eternity before he could talk to Graham alone. Latin Condensed, for God's sake.

“This morning, I'm going to turn the proceedings over directly to Special Agent Graham,” the chief said.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” Graham said. “Very early this morning, we received a report of a child, approximate age five to seven, seen in the dense woods near the border of Hill and Deer counties in the company of an adult male. We have reason to think that the child is Jamie Brokaw.”

There was a momentary commotion, during which Jerry Graham sipped coffee from a plastic cup. When the noise subsided, he went on: Early that day, a man identifying himself as a deer hunter had called the Deer County Sheriff's Department, reporting that the previous day he had seen a man pulling a sled on which was strapped a child. The man had been accompanied by a very large dog, apparently a German shepherd, and had fired two shots when the deer hunter approached.

On the phone, the deer hunter had acknowledged that he was hunting illegally, before the start of the regular season, and he had therefore been reluctant to call the authorities.

“But his conscience got the better of him, and he finally called,” Graham said.

Graham went on to summarize what little the authorities knew: that the hunter had described the man in the woods as being medium height and build, wearing a ski mask—“You will recall that the kidnappers of Jamie Brokaw wore ski masks”—and that the sighting had taken place while it was snowing.

“The fact that the boy appeared to be strapped to the sled, plus the fact that the man fired two shots, makes it probable that the boy was Jamie Brokaw and the man with him one of the kidnappers,” Graham said.

One of the kidnappers, Will thought. Well, what about the other one? He could hardly concentrate on the questions and answers that flew by, so intent was he on getting Jerry Graham alone.

“Mr. Graham, would you please answer yes or no on whether the kidnappers managed to escape with the latest ransom bundle despite heavy surveillance of the drop site, and does this indicate that the authorities have lost control of the case?” The questioner was the beautiful young television reporter. One tough cookie, Will thought.

Graham kept his face impassive. “The ransom was delivered as per instructions, and I will not comment on the other parts of your question.”

The reporter with the dirty raincoat was on his feet. “Agent Graham, in view of the fact that the authorities issued an ultimatum, namely that there must be proof the boy is alive and well before any more ransom is delivered, what do you think this sighting means?”

“I don't understand the question.”

“Well, sir, I mean, do you think the kidnappers are moving the boy to a different hiding place? More to the point, has he been under your nose all the while?”

“I have no way of knowing that,” Graham said. “There's a lot of places a child can be hidden. And moving him from one place to another would probably not be that difficult. How many vans and pickup trucks are registered just in Hill and Deer counties? Thousands. And you don't have to drive very far to find some of the densest woods in the Northeast. We've got a couple hundred square miles of forest that start just a short drive from here.”

“Agent Graham, in view of what you now know, might it not have been wise to conduct a thorough search of the woods in the region?” asked the reporter with the big biceps.

Graham bit his lip, then answered. “It's not that simple to conduct a thorough search, as you put it, of dense woods. Especially when the weather is iffy. But as a matter of fact, I can tell you now that state police aircraft have been keeping their eyes open, so to speak.”

Will couldn't help but be amused. Graham had practically chewed his last words. Will recalled that Graham had trained in hand-to-hand combat. Perhaps the FBI man was even now fantasizing about being in a room alone with Big Biceps and bouncing him from wall to wall.…

“Mr. Graham, no doubt the boy's parents have been notified. How are they reacting?”

“Like any parents would. They are, naturally, hopeful that the child sighted is indeed their son, and that no harm has yet come to him.”

“What do you mean by that, sir?” It was Dirty Raincoat again.

“I shouldn't have to spell that out,” Graham said coldly.

Jerry, Jerry, Will thought. Learn to suffer the fools.

“Sir, some of us have heard a rumor that the kidnappers threatened to assault the boy sexually? Can you comment?”

“I have no comment,” Graham said, barely in control. “Except that whoever would spread rumors like that is beneath contempt.”

That brought silence to the room. Impatient to get things over with, Will stood up. “Jer … Agent Graham, is a search of the woods being done now, and was the man who called the Deer County Sheriff's Office able to pinpoint the sighting?”

“Yes. As we speak, a search is under way in a selected area, in the section of woods where the hunter thinks he saw the man and the boy. The weather forecast is not promising, but we have no choice but to press the search at this point.”

Another question occurred to Will, one so obvious that he was surprised no one else had asked it. He must phrase it as though he knew it to be a fact: “Agent Graham, I assume the Deer County Sheriff's Office tape-records its incoming telephone calls. Is the tape of the hunter's call being analyzed, or will it be, and what do you hope to find out?”

“Yes, the tape of that call will be analyzed. For what it's worth, we think from the tone of voice and the caller's tendency to mumble certain words that it was an older man. And I don't know what we'll find out, other than that he has loose dentures.”

There was a low collective chuckle in the room. Several pairs of eyes turned respectfully to Will, who would have been flushed with pride except that he was dying to talk to Jerry Graham alone.

The lovely TV reporter raised her hand. “Mr. Graham, what about the previous messages from the kidnappers? I mean, their having been sent from different locations and all? What does that mean in view of the boy's being sighted in the deep woods?”

Which was precisely what Will was trying to guess at.

“Who can say?” the agent replied. “We already know there were at least two kidnappers, after all. If I had more answers, I might have the boy.”

“Well,” the gorgeous reporter pressed, “do you think the different locations used in the ransom mailings were meant as a diversion, or are the kidnappers just toying with you?”

“I don't know,” Graham said. “I suggest you ask the kidnappers. When we catch them. Which we will.”