Atmosphere (10 page)

"Shaving must be the trendy thing to do before committing a crime," Frank grinned, thinking uncomfortably of how Bobby Lindsay had sheared his entire body.

"So then I thought," Martin said, apparently ignoring Frank, "What if I refine my search to..." He typed in
white, male, bald, sunglasses
into the search box. "Watch this." He hit enter.

The hourglass reappeared, flickered on the screen for a few seconds, then a new window popped up, displaying the search results:
17 instances occurred.

Frank, rubbing the emerging shadow from his chin, felt his heart pump. Excitement. Adrenaline racing through his blood. This was getting good. He wanted to scream at Martin, rush him along to get to the meat of his treasure.

Clearly though the detective didn't wish to excavate his find in slabs. He wanted to take it all nice and slow, spell it out for his boss piece by piece, exactly how it had been originally uncovered, as if he had excavated his gold mine with a putty knife.
Smart
, Frank thought.
The bastard's adding suspense
. Typical detective. Showing off for the boss. Frank would've done it precisely the same way.

"I pulled up the first sketch, and here's what I found."

Martin grabbed a disc from the desk, slipped it into the computer's A-drive, directed the mouse to open the file. The computer produced a faint grinding noise, the monitor flashed, and a then face appeared, a sketch of a bald man wearing sunglasses, small nose, slit for a mouth—the same man from the alley. Or so it seemed.

"Holy shit—that's our man," Hector said, rubbing Martin's shoulder, smiling at Frank.

"Looks just like the sketch you showed me." Frank scratched his chin.

"It's not the same sketch, though," Martin added. "This one was drawn up two months ago, at the Seventh. And get this. This guy's a kidnapping suspect."

"Uh-oh, we have to find him," Hector remarked.

"Shouldn't be too difficult. We've got him on file." Martin aimed the mouse pointer to the edge of the window and dragged it to a split screen, revealing a mug shot of the same man, minus the shades.

Frank smiled inside, felt a warmth of inquisitive relief spread through him like a spray of bath water, easing up the adrenaline tensing all his personalities and bringing about a calming effect to his hankering, like a fix of drugs to his puzzle-solving addiction.

"Well...who is he?" Frank asked, licking his lips, almost salivating.

Martin retrieved the file on the suspect. The screen went blank and then a row of fingerprints appeared, running along the top edge of the screen. Below, a front and side-view mug scrolled into view, accompanied with the mystery man's vital statistics:

Harold Gross,
 
Height: 6' 1",
 
Weight: 195,
 
Eyes: Brown
 
Hair: Shaved (Brown)

DOB: 2/18/70

Current Address:
 
435 East 108th Street, Apt. 6J, Bronx.
 
Telephone: None

"Nice Jewish boy," Hector said.

"Jewish, yes," Martin grinned. "But not so nice. Check out his rap."

He aimed the mouse pointer to a button at the upper right of the screen and clicked it. The photos and fingerprints disappeared and were quickly replaced with a laundry list of convicted crimes committed by Harold Gross. "Seventeen arrests dating back seven years, to January of 1991. Started out small—petty theft, public disturbance. Later he graduated to the bigger stuff, mostly aggravated assaults. Nothing too out of hand, though, never did more than a month's time." Martin clicked the sketch and mug shot back to front.

Frank tilted his head slightly, observed the sketch and photo more closely. The grainy shaded lines of the portrait carved a frighteningly perfect match to the lines stroking the face in the photo. "Amazing likeness. It sure as hell looks like him." He ran a hand through his hair. "But how can we be sure that this Harold Gross is
our
bald guy?" Hector made a small
hmph
sound as if to second Frank's query.

Martin nodded. "I knew you'd ask that. Remember I mentioned before that Gross had been a kidnapping suspect? Well not too long ago, a few weeks back, he apparently spent some time hanging around with a kid from the Bronx named Andrew Knowles—who's now nowhere to be found."

Hector grumbled.

Martin nodded, pulled his notebook close to the edge of his desk. "On record, we know that Andrew Knowles was seventeen years old. A problem kid. High school drop-out. Arrested twice for drug possession, once for disorderly conduct. Parents reported minor domestic problems to the police a couple of times. In July, Knowles' parents filed a missing person's report. Says here he befriended a 'Harold Gross' three weeks prior to his disappearance, had inexplicably started spending all his time with the stranger, nearly twenty-four hours a day until he just stopped coming home altogether. Detectives from the Seventh went to Gross' place, and what-do-ya-know?" He looked up from the screen, peered at Hector. "Their report shows no evidence to warrant even an association with Knowles."

"So then we don't know for sure that Gross actually had anything to do with Knowles' disappearance," Hector said.

"Well, we have no evidence to corroborate his guilt. As far as the report is concerned, Knowles is simply missing, a probable run-away."

Leaning forward, Frank said, "I think our foremost concern now is whether Gross is our man from the alley."

"Indeed. But we can't assume he's our body snatcher until we actually question him." For the first time Martin turned and looked at Frank. His cheeks were turgid, his lips dry, his blue eyes two sapphires set in stone. He no doubt spent way too much time behind the computer. Frank returned the stare, wanting to set a fire under his desk chair. As systematic as Martin was, his diligence slowed him down.

"But who's to say he wouldn't have made the two kids in the alley just 'disappear' if we hadn't shown up?"

Martin smiled cockily, not ready to let Frank show him up just yet. "Hold your horses—you're getting way ahead of me. I thought of that, and had no doubts about our bald guy being Gross." He turned back to the computer. "Remember when I mentioned earlier that my search resulted in seventeen hits? Well...I had completely forgotten about the other sixteen after spending so much time researching Gross. When I saw that I still had sixteen other faces, I went back and checked those out too, really thinking all along that I had lucked out and found our man on the first try."

Martin clicked the mouse a few times. "You won't believe this."
 

An amazing sight appeared on the screen before them.
 

Sixteen miniature police sketches, four rows and four columns, all bald men wearing sunglasses. All creepily similar to one another—like the sketch of Harold Gross.

Frank's mouth dropped, Hector saying "holy shit" a moment before it escaped his own tongue.

Martin said, "My sentiments exactly, only I repeated myself a dozen times as I checked each one out. I'm sure you could imagine my eagerness as I went through them." He turned a page in the notebook, then looked up at Hector. "You might want to sit down for this, Captain."

"Try me," Hector challenged. Both he and Frank leaned forward, reading along with Martin as he ran down his findings.

"Out of the remaining sixteen sketches, three were armed robbery suspects, one of which wore a bandana on his head." He pointed to the third sketch down in the first column. "Two were mugging suspects, one a rapist. The rapist is in jail, as are two of the armed bandits. The other three are out on parole." He placed a small piece of Post-it note paper over the faces of the six criminals.

"That leaves us with ten bad boys," he said, hesitating.

"Yes?" Hector urged.

Martin tapped the monitor screen with the eraser end of his pencil. "These sketches were drawn up from eyewitness accounts during a series of supposed kidnappings that ran from all the way from Eastern Long Island to Manhattan, Jersey, and Rockland."

Frank wiped a film of sweat forming on his brow. "Jesus."

Martin looked at Frank. "Wait, it gets even weirder." He gripped his left cheek with his thumb and index finger. "Each case dealt with the disappearance of a male adolescent ranging in age from fifteen to nineteen years. Every report had been filed by at least one parent, and on all of them there were claims of the named victim growing suddenly reclusive, careless with their appearance just weeks before their disappearance, each and every one leaving home for long lengths only to return home at night for a few hours sleep and perhaps a meal."

Frank raised an eyebrow in Hector's direction. "Sound familiar?"

Hector nodded. "Knowles."

"Yep," Martin added. "And these sketches? Six were given by parents, the other four by friends of the youths..."

"Reliable sources," Hector finished.

Frank asked, "Is it possible that Gross could be solely responsible for the disappearance of all those kids?"

Martin spun his chair around, faced Frank and Hector. "I've always felt that if it seems too obvious at first glance, then it probably is. Given
these
glaring circumstances, I had to check it out." He leaned forward. "You know what I found? It's too obvious."

Hector finally pulled up a chair, sat to Martin's right. He rubbed his eyes, clearly growing weary. Frank shifted in his chair, allowed the blood to flow more freely to his legs, which had started to grow numb. Being wholly absorbed in this unfolding of clues, he hadn't changed his position since he'd sat down nearly twenty minutes ago.
 

Martin spun back to face the monitor. "The first thing I wondered was how on earth could there not have been some real intense public investigation on this guy. Recurrent similarities in ten diverse descriptions of a supposed kidnapper that's making teenage boys vanish would demand a huge manhunt. And it would be a big time media event, not unlike your Lindsay case, Frank." He took a sip of coffee, grimaced. "Well, there isn't anything remotely close to an investigation on file. You know why? Because the FBI led the investigation and kept the whole damn thing under wraps. And they had not one, but
two
guys under scrutiny. Neither of whom were Gross."

Again, Martin turned a page in his notebook. He must have been up all night with this, Frank thought, knowing exactly how it feels to obsess over a treasure hunt.

"The first guy they went after was named James Hilton," he noted, pulling up a mug shot on the screen of a middle-aged bald man with a scar running along his left cheek. "Forty-seven years of age, a long history of small crimes under his belt, as well as one armed robbery and one grand auto theft. He was the lead suspect in the investigation of three missing boys, ages sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen." He shifted the mug shot over to the right side of the screen and pointed to one of the sketches. See the scar?"

"Not Harold Gross, but James Hilton," Frank observed.

"You bet. And more of these are likely to be Hilton."

"And the other guy?"

Martin shifted the mouse and brought a second photo to the forefront of the display. Again, a male, as bald as Gross and Hilton. "Edward Farrell. Thirty-three, past record similar to that of Gross and Hilton. Had been at the center of an FBI probe last year concerning the disappearance of four teen-aged boys."

Hector shifted forward; the chair he sat in creaked like a rusty door hinge. "I'm at the edge of my seat Philip, don't keep me hanging."

"According to the report
we
have, both Hilton and Farrell were found dead, victims of apparent suicide."

"Bullshit," Frank insinuated.

"Seems like it, huh?"

Hector said, "You said it yourself. If it seems too obvious, than it probably is."
 

"So then what
did
happen to Hilton and Farrell?" Frank asked.

"The only thing we know for sure is that they're dead."

Frank leaned back, placed his hands on his head. "Seems to me we can't be certain about anything other than the facts we have, that we stumbled onto something really fucked up. Sure, thanks to Martin we have a good deal of information, but clearly no definitive answers. We're still in the dark. Think about it. We've got at
least
three bald guys wearing sunglasses going around snatching teen-aged boys away from their parents, two of whom are presumed to be dead. And we have no details of an investigation on record other than some trivialities that the FBI decided not to keep under lock and key. If that ain't fucked up, then I'll turn in my badge."
 

Martin rested his chin on his fists. "So the question is: where do we go from here?"

"Hect?" Frank inquired, seeking a response from Rodriguez.

Hector Rodriguez stood, stretched a bit, then picked up the phone on Martin's desk. "Ernie, I'd like to see you in my office in five minutes. Yes." He hung up, then said, "Phil, first off, cancel the national data search, and don't release the sketch of Gross. We've got enough to go on for now. I'd like you find out anything you can on Hilton and Farrell, their pasts, where they hung out, what they did for a living." He scratched his head and admitted, "I agree. I don't necessarily think we're getting the entire story regarding their deaths. The FBI knew something and kept it quiet. Perhaps their motives were to avoid a mass hysteria among parents, but that doesn't seem feasible. These were teenagers, young adults who willingly went with their abductors. You know, come to think of it, try to contact some of the parents of the missing kids, find out anything you can about the details surrounding their disappearance, and their relationships with Hilton and Farrell."