Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 1, No. 1, May 1967 (UK)

You Can’t Catch Me by Larry Maddock

One might be accused of ironic indulgence should he recall here, from Nonsense Songs, “They took some honey, and plenty of money, wrapped up in a five-pound note.”

I was finishing my research on the Thompson murder case when the phone rang. Murphy should have answered it, since he was the one on duty, but Chief of Detectives Raglan was closer to the phone Not yet forty, Raglan was almost a stereotype of a top cop; bull-necked and massiveshouldered, with a truck driver face which fronted for a tricky, analytical mind He wrapped his meaty hand around the receiver and put it to his ear. “Homicide,” he said. “Go ahead.”

His expression brightened, then clouded “Where are you, honey?” he asked, grabbing for a pencil. By this time, of course, my eyebrows were up and my ears were at attention. There was only one person in the world whom Raglan would ever call “honey”.

“Sit tight, honey,” he was saying. “I’ll have someone there in five minutes.” He broke the connection and dialed three numbers while I stuffed my notes back into my briefcase. “Prowler at 730 Barron,” he barked. “Get two cars there and seal off the block. I’ll cover the house myself.”

I’d watched him in action for seventeen years, and knew my time for questions would come later.

Raglan hung up and shifted his bulk in the swivel chair. “Get the lead out, Murph!” he bellowed. “My kid just reported a prowler. Let’s move!” He was out of the chair by now and grabbing his coat. He must have seen my expression because he grinned at me. “You want a story, Shaffer? Come on!”

Moments later the three of us were in a squad car heading east, and Raglan was telling me, “I’m not doing this just because it’s my kid. She wouldn’t call unless she was sure she saw somebody. We’ve had prowler reports before in that neighbourhood.”

Murphy started the siren then to clear traffic and, as shouting over it was not my idea of how to get a story, I sat back to enjoy as much of the ride as I could. Even Raglan showed signs of tension at the bigger intersections.

Hard-nosed and determined to do his job, Joe Raglan had first come to my attention when, as a rookie patrolman, he gave the Mayor a citation for speeding. I was a rookie, too, in the middle of my first year on the Bulletin. It was that first Officer Raglan story that gave me a freer hand with the police and City Hall beat than I probably deserved.

I’d kept track of Raglan after that, figuring he’d brought me luck. He was a cautious cop. He never made a move until he was sure he was right, but when he moved it was with a ruthlessness that brooked no opposition. That he should have been promoted to the Detective Bureau was as natural as my own advancement as a reporter. We both, I suppose, went as high as we wanted to.

Despite our similarities, however, in all the seventeen years I had never liked the man. Understood him, yes. Admired him, certainly. But I could never bring myself really to like him. He was too cold, too analytical, too well-honed a blade for my taste. The only warmth I’d ever seen him show was for his daughter.

Murphy killed the siren and the squad car rolled to a gentle stop two doors down from our destination. It was as close to a surburban neighbourhood as you could find while still inside the city limits. The other two cars were already there, one at each end of the block.

“No noise,” Raglan cautioned, and the three of us got out. “You and Shaffer cover the front of the house. I’m going around back.”

Murphy and I found shadows to stand in, while Raglan went heavily but silently to the wooden gate at the side of the house. A moment later he had it open without a sound. Then he was gone and I watched the gate swing slowly closed. There were no sounds for several minutes.

To Murphy, I imagined, it was not the sort of investigation which should legitimately concern an ambitious young detective. But Raglan had seniority, and I guess you don’t complain when the big boys call the shots. At least not in public.

Raglan’s voice came sharp and clear: “Debbie. Debbie!” Heavy footsteps inside the house. The front door burst open. “Murph! Shaffer! She’s not here!”

We sprinted for the door. “The children?” Murphy asked. He’s got two of his own about that age, and he tends to worry.

“Asleep,” Raglan said. He looked at his watch. “I talked to her ten minutes ago and she was okay. But take a look — she didn’t leave willingly, that’s for sure.”

The living-room told its own story A coffee table was upended in front of a sectional couch. A chair lay on its side not far from a television set. Between the couch sections, on a magazine stand, was a pink telephone, perversely undisturbed. A lamp leaned crazily against the near end of the couch. The draperies along the back wall had been partially torn loose from their runners, revealing a sliding glass door behind them. There was a hum and the scritch-rake sound of a phonograph needle grooving monotonously at the end of a record. Loose-leaf paper littered the floor.

The living-room was connected with the kitchen by a doorway and also by an open serving area above a waist-high counter. A stone fireplace dominated about a third of the outside wall The wall-to-wall carpeting would have made the room feel cozy had it not been for the signs of recent violence.

Raglan stared thoughtfully at a purse which lay open on the couch. He reached inside and found his daughter’s wallet, thumbed it open. “Three bucks,” he said, tossing it back in the purse. He pulled open the draperies and through the glass wall we could see a small porch and some lawn furniture beyond.

There was the click of a switch and light spilled from the side door of the garage at the back of the lot, revealing an object which lay crumpled on the grass nearby For a big man, Raglan moved fast, ducking outside and covering the ground with long strides, Murphy and I at his heels. “Her sweater,” Raglan said. “Cover me, Murph.”

Gun in hand, he approached the garage door; Murphy moved up on the other side. I prudently removed myself from the line of possible tire.

“Debbie!” Raglan called. “You in there, honey?”

He listened for a moment, then stepped quickly inside. “Come on, Murph!” I heard him say, and Murphy followed. A moment later the garage light went out.

“Stop where you are!” a new voice barked.

“Relax, Phillips — it’s me, Chief Raglan. See anybody?”

In the distance a dog began to yap. “Nobody,” Phillips reported.

“Where’s your partner?”

“With the car, sir.”

“Get him. Go over this alley from one end to the other. First I want you to call in an APB on Deborah Raglan, fifteen, hundred thirty pounds, brown hair, green eyes, good figure, last seen wearing a green plaid skirt, yellow blouse, saddle oxfords. Got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“One other thing,” Raglan said. “When I saw her at ten o’clock her hair was up in curlers. She had a pale green scarf over it. Get that on the air now Don’t waste any time.”

“Yes, sir. You want the lab crew tonight, sir?”

“Get ’em here.”

While Raglan and Murphy started searching the alley, I returned to the house. I looked in on the kids and saw that they were sleeping soundly. Then I went to the telephone. My deadline for the final edition is eleven o’clock; I still had a little over ten minutes. I picked up the phone. There was no dial tone. It took me another minute or two to find the kitchen extension, which was off the hook. Had Debbie been trying to call out when the prowler broke in? I jiggled the hook until I got a tone, then dialed the city room.

“Jackson, this is Ted Shaffer,” I said. “Page one if you have room. Chief Raglan’s daughter is missing. Foul play suspected. While babysitting last night she called her father, Chief of Detectives Joseph P. Raglan, Homicide Bureau, to report a prowler in the neighbourhood. That was about fifteen, twenty minutes. Make it ten-thirty. Ten minutes later, Raglan arrived in a squad car. No prowler has been found yet but neither has the girl. Name is Deborah.” I repeated the description Raglan had rattled off a few minutes ago.

I could hear Jackson’s typewriter clacking as he took it down. There was an envelope on the kitchen counter. I picked it up, then continued, “Her sweater was found in the back yard. Address is 730 Barron Street, home of Mr. Frank Van Drimmelen.” I told him about the purse, then added, “Look in the morgue for shots of her; about a year ago I did a picture story on her, the cop’s daughter who wants to follow in her daddy’s footsteps. Yeah, I’ll hang on.”

I could hear Jackson bellowing for somebody to look for Debbie’s picture. In a moment he was back on the line, firing questions.

“Yeah, Howdy. Two kids, about two and four. Apparently she was making a phone call when her assailant broke into the house. Kitchen phone off the hook. I was with Raglan when he got the call. How’s that for luck, huh?”

I hung up and looked at the mess in the living-room. Van Drimmelen’s hi-fi was still grooving on the record I walked around the kitchen partition and lifted the needle off, being careful not to disturb any fingerprints that might be on the pickup arm. A record jacket lay nearby. I found the control and turned the hi-fi off. Without the hum the house was deadly quiet

The stillness was broken by the telephone bell. I reached through the service opening into the kitchen and picked the receiver off the nook. Before I could answer a man’s voice said, “Deborah?”

“No, she isn’t here at the moment,” I said. “Who’s calling?”

“Isn’t there!” the voice exploded. “She’s babysitting my kids! Who is this?”

“Your children are fine, Mr. Van Drimmelen,” I assured him. “But I suggest you come home immediately. Debbie reported a prowler to the police. When we got here she had disappeared.”

“What happened?”

“We don’t know yet. Apparently somebody broke in.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“The children are both asleep, and somebody will stay with them until you arrive, so drive carefully.”

“I will. Thank you.”

As I hung up, Raglan came in from the back yard, carrying Debbie’s sweater. “She must have had it around her shoulder’s,” Raglan said.

I nodded. “Van Drimmelen’s on his way home, Joe,” I told him “He just called. Find anything else?”

“Nothing. There’s no trace of her. A kid just doesn’t disappear without a trace. Not Debbie. She put up a fight anyway,” he added, looking at the mess.

“You’ll find her, Joe,” I assured him. “Got any theories about it?”

His eyes narrowed for a moment as he stared at the sweater. “It might not just be a prowler,” he said. “I don’t have anything at all to back up that statement, but I’ve got to suspect the worst.”

“Motive?” I asked.

“Try revenge,” he said.

I looked at him.

“It’s no secret that I think the world of that kid. Could you come up with a better way to get back at me?”

“Can I quote you on that?”

“Yeah. Go ahead. But as a police officer I’ve got to think of other possibilities, too. I know Debbie. I know how her mind works. This theory, though, you do not quote.”

“All right,” I agreed. “Did she have any reason to run away from home?”

“What reason does any fifteen-year-old have?”

“She’s not — in trouble, is she?”

“She better not be. But I don’t know. Hold off for a day on the revenge theory. You’ll be the first to know the minute I get anything.”

“I know that. What grade’s she in, Joe. And what school?”

“Ten. McKinley. Why?”

“I may be able to get farther in this direction than you could.”

“I appreciate your help. I don’t recall any special girl friends — my wife might, though. Debbie is a lot like me. She keeps pretty much to herself.”

Raglan went out then to check on progress m the alley and returned just as a car stopped out front. A key turned in the lock and we watched the front door swing open to admit a tall man and an attractive, buxom woman. “Raglan!” the man said. “What happened. Did you find her yet?”

Raglan shook his head. “Shaffer, this is Frank Drimmelen and his wife.”

“Excuse me, please,” the woman said. “My babies.” She vanished towards the bedrooms.

“I tried to call Debbie at ten-thirty,” Van Drimmelen said, “to tell her Nikkie and I might be about an hour later than we’d planned, but the phone was busy.”

“She was calling me about then,” Raglan said, nodding.

“I tried again three times in the next ten minutes,” Van Drimmelen continued, seeming to enjoy the limelight of his own testimony. “I even called the operator to see if the line was out of order. She was still talking, though. Half an hour later I tried again and Officer Shaffer answered.”

The woman returned and gasped when she saw the living-room. “Good heavens, this is a mess. Let me clean it up,” she said, starting forward. “Oh, what a mess!”

“Don’t touch anything,” Raglan said sharply. “The lab boys ought to be here any minute. I’ll need your prints, Frank, and your wife’s, so we can eliminate them.”

“You’ll find mine on both phones,” I volunteered. “I don’t think I touched anything else.”

The technicians arrived and spent an hour combing the house; it was nearly one by the time Raglan, Murphy and I got back to the police station. Raglan told me to check with him in the morning, and I went home.

The big detective had been in and out already when I called Homicide the next morning, which was Wednesday, so I bought a paper on my way in to the Bulletin building. The story was on page one. Jackson had slugged it, “CHIEF’S DAUGHTER VANISHES,” with a sub-deck reading, “Foul Play Suspected.”

Stanton Pritchard, perhaps the best city editor in three states, was pointing out the story to one of our newer staff members as I walked in. “Here’s how to be a star reporter, Nolan,” Pritch was saying. “Pick a cop, make him look like a hero, help him get promoted and twenty years later you’re the one he calls when something breaks. Oh, hello, Shaffer.”

“You’ve got it all wrong, Pritch,” I said. “The real secret is to work for a paper that pays you so poorly you’re forced to moonlight. So you start writing up old murders for the true crime magazines; that puts you in the cop’s office at ten-thirty at night when all the action starts. How you doing, Nolan?”

“Fine, Mr. Shaffer. Anything new on the Raglan story?”

“I don’t know, kid. I just got here. Pritch, I’d like to spend most of the day on this thing, unless you have something more pressing in mind.”

Pritchard grinned. “Can you give me twenty inches by four o’clock?”

“If you promise me a fourteen point byline. I’m going to talk to her schoolmates today, find out what sort of girl she was — pardon me, is,” I told him. “Tomorrow I’ll have a quote from Raglan that it might be the work of a revenge-seeking ex-con.”

“He tell you that?”

“Asked me to sit on it for a day or so.”

I spent a few minutes in the morgue giving Old Mayhew instructions to dig out every criminal Raglan had been instrumental in capturing, starting about five years ago and working backwards, in case the revenge theory was right. Then I called the Superintendent of McKinley High School and got his permission to talk to Deborah Raglan’s home room teacher. By the time I arrived he had rounded up several teachers, Debbie’s counsellor, the school nurse, her Phys Ed instructor, and the presidents of the two student organizations to which she belonged In all, I interviewed five teachers and about a dozen students. The picture which emerged was in line with Raglan’s statement that she was a lot like her father — a loner. Apparently Debbie had no “best” friends of either sex. She dated a variety of boys, apparently so sure of herself that she considered a “steady” an unnecessary social crutch.

I asked the blonde, buck-toothed girl who sat next to her in study hall if there was any chance Debbie might have staged the whole thing and run away.

“That’d be tough,” the girl replied, intrigued by the idea. “She’d have to have a real good reason, though. She figures everything out, you know?”

Caution seemed to be a Raglan family trait.

I stopped at a pay phone and called Homicide again. This time Raglan was in. “Any news about Debbie?” I asked.

“Nothing much. Some strange prints on that glass door, but they don’t match anything in R and I. You’ve been busy at the school?”

“They all say the same thing: bright, good character, no trouble, no enemies, no close friends, sort of a loner, fairly popular but she didn’t make a career of it. If you have no objections, Joe, I’d like to talk with your wife.”

“Sure. She’s at home. I told her to stay there in case Debbie called.”

“I’ll check with you later.”

“Do that. By the way, Shaffer, when are you going, to learn not to withhold information from the police?”

“What information?”

“I have to read in the paper that the phone was off the hook. Anything else you didn’t tell me?”

“The hi-fi was on.”

“Of course. I’m surprised she wasn’t watching television at the same time. I wonder if she was trying to call me back?”

“Could be,” I agreed. “Let me know if the lab comes up with anything newsworthy.”

Talking to Florence Raglan, I suspected, would be one of the least pleasant parts of my day. I figured that staying married to her was either a point of honour with Raglan, or he was doing it just to be near his kid. I took the elevator up to their third-floor apartment and thumbed the bell.

Florence Raglan had been a pretty woman once. Traces of it were still visible, if you looked past the hard lines around her mouth and the puffy eyes. She opened the door and stared blankly at me for a moment. “Yes?”

“I’m Ted Shaffer, Mrs. Raglan, with the Bulletin. I was with Joe last night when he discovered Debbie was missing. Can you tell me what happened earlier in the evening?”

She ushered me into her living-room and motioned me to a chair. When she spoke it was in a voice that had too many sharp edges.

“We had dinner at six o’clock, then Deborah walked over to the Van Drimmelens’. Joe has a crime show he likes to watch on Tuesday nights, so he stayed home. About a quarter of ten Deborah called and asked if her father could bring her one of her other school-books, so he drove over with it.”

“He would have seen her about ten o’clock, then,” I said.

“That’s right. I suppose he went to the office after that.”

“Did your daughter seem nervous earlier in the evening?”

Florence Raglan shook her head. “She read a book all through dinner.” She stared at the telephone, then massaged her forehead with the heel of her hand.

“I know this is upsetting you, Mrs. Raglan. Would you rather I came back later?”

She shook her head again.

“About a year ago,” I said, “I did a story on Debbie — I think you recall it. Does she still want to follow in Joe’s footsteps and become a criminologist?”

“That was just a phase she was going through,” the woman replied. “She worships her father, of course, but I think lately she’s been leaning towards writing.”

“What sort of writing?”

Her voice held a sharp note of contempt. “Mysteries, of course.”

Naturally. With Joe Raglan in her pocket she’d be a fool to write anything else.

“You’re hoping for a phone call?” I asked.

“It’s possible, I suppose, but not very likely.” Mrs. Raglan smiled thinly. “I’d be the last person she’d call.”

“Are any of her clothes missing?”

“No, nothing’s missing. There was money in her purse. There’s still over a hundred dollars in her savings account.”

“Would it be possible for me to take a look at some of her writing?”

“If you wish,” she said, crushing out her cigarette and standing up. “But I assure you it’s nothing worthwhile.”

Mrs. Raglan led me deeper into the apartment and opened the door. “This is her room,” she said flatly. “Such as it is. Doesn’t look much like a normal teenager’s bedroom, does it?”

The room was starkly functional. A portable record player was in one corner, on the floor. The bed had no stuffed animals on it, the dresser-top was bare. A kneehole desk stood against one wall, and an old portable typewriter occupied the centre of it. Mrs. Raglan opened the drawers, disclosing a neat stack of typing paper, carbons, pencils and paper clips but nothing which looked remotely like a manuscript. “They’re probably in her locker at school. I think she took them in for Mr. Sorenson in the English Department to check over.”

I added Sorenson’s name to my notes.

“You’d hardly know she was a girl,” the woman said wryly. “She refused to learn how to sew. Said it didn’t interest her. Cooking was the same. She was always too busy with her art work — for which she Had no talent at all, and I told her so. For a while she wanted to be a dancer but she had absolutely no sense of rhythm.” There were many things Florence Raglan felt were wrong with her daughter and she seemed to enjoy listing them. “Lately it was writing, but the girl can’t even spell. When she took typing I tried to talk her into taking shorthand, too. Being a stenographer is a respectable career for a girl, but she said she wasn’t interested in other people’s words.”

“She must be a pretty good babysitter, though,” I ventured.

“She never sat for anyone but the Van Drimmelens. I was hoping that would bring out her feminine instincts, but I haven’t seen much improvement. She’s just too much like her father.”

“In what way?”

She gave me a long-suffering smile. “You know how Joe loves playing cops and robbers. He’s smart enough to get a better job, but being a detective has glamour. It feeds his ego. Do you know he even turned down a promotion last year because it would mean he’d have to grow up and start acting like a man?”

“I know.” It would have been unwise to tell her that was one of the reasons I admired Joe Raglan. I thanked her for her co-operation, borrowed a photo of Debbie and put it in my briefcase, and left her to resume her telephone vigil.

It was noon. I traced the eight-block route Debbie had travelled to her babysitting job and parked in front of the Van Drimmelens’. The neighbourhood seemed just as quiet as it had been last night.

Mrs. Van Drimmelen was home, feeding lunch to her two children. She was an attractive young woman, big-boned, with the clean, just-scrubbed look that owes more to diet than cosmetics. “I’m so upset over this,” she said. “You just don’t know. I’ve been so afraid something like this would happen.”

“You’ve had trouble with prowlers before?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Never, as long as we’ve been here. We’ve been very fortunate in this neighbourhood, until last night. But... well, you know, Mr. Shaffer, a mother can’t help worrying about her children. Finding Debbie was such a godsend. Not very many girls her age are so capable or so dependable. She was always here fifteen to twenty minutes early, she never touched anything that didn’t belong to her. She was a real contrast to some of the girls we’ve had.”

“How did you happen to find Deborah?”

“My husband knows her father. Frank was telling Mr. Raglan about the troubles we’d been having with babysitters, and that very night Debbie called us. I’ve been so thankful she did — until this horrible thing happened.”

“Could you give me the names of your neighbours? I’d like to talk with them.”

“Of course.” She dictated a list of names while I wrote them down.

It was a short block, with only five houses counting the ones on the corners, so I worked my way from one end to the other. A Mrs. Carter Phillips, in the corner house, furnished the only piece of information which might conceivably be considered a clue.

“Nothing unusual ever happens in this neighbourhood,” she said. “About the most exciting thing yesterday — until the girl’s disappearance, I mean — was the old car that was parked behind our garage all day. I was a little angry about it, and I was going to call the police if it was still there today, but it isn’t.”

“A strange car?”

“I suppose I wouldn’t even have noticed it if it hadn’t been parked right where we put the trash barrels.”

“What kind of a car?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It was just an old black car like you see in junkyards. It was there all day, and it was still there when I went shopping last night, but it was gone by the time I got back.”

“What time was that?”

“Let’s see,” she said. “I was almost the last person to leave the supermarket, so it would have been a few minutes past ten when I returned. I told the police all about it and they said they didn’t think it was important.”

I drove thoughtfully back to the newspaper office.

Old Mayhew had done a good job for me. On my desk was a stack of clippings covering some thirty-seven cases in which Raglan’s testimony had helped send the accused to prison. I had about an hour or so left in which to produce twenty inches of copy for Pritch, so I set the tiles aside and began sifting my notes to find a starting place. Sometimes it’s like trying to pick up a jellyfish without knowing where the handle is. I had enough material, all I had to do now was put it together in the proper order. After about ten minutes I began building my lead paragraph I stared at it for a minute, then reached for the telephone.

Raglan was in his office. No, there were no last-minute developments.

“May I use the revenge theory yet, Joe?”

“I’d rather you didn’t until tomorrow,” Raglan said. “I don’t want to tip anyone off.”

“Anything to the old car in the alley?”

“What?”

“I’ve been busy, Joe. A Mrs. Phillips at 768 Barron said there was an old car parked behind her garage all day yesterday.”

“Oh, that. It was gone too early to have anything to do with this. If Debbie isn’t home by midnight I’ll have deputies and Boy Scouts combing the area for a body.”

“I hope you’re wrong.”

I broke the connection, dialed McKinley High School, and arranged for Mr. Sorenson of the English Department to call me immediately. It took him five minutes.

“Mr. Sorenson,” I said. “I’ve been told Deborah Raglan is interested in writing. Know anything about it?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Shaffer,” Victor Sorenson replied. “I wasn’t in this morning, but I heard about your visit. Yes, Debbie showed quite a bit of promise. Her spelling was atrocious, but her stories were original and well-plotted, although of course there was very little depth to her characters.”

“Why do you say ‘of course’?”

“At fifteen? Would you expect her to have the insight you or I would have?”

“I wouldn’t expect the average fifteen-year-old to be writing mystery stories.”

“You have a point there,” he agreed. “Still, Debbie was not a very warm individual. Her mind was very clinical; her emotional development was wanting. She might have been capable, as she grew older, of attaining some degree of rapport with her fellow human beings, but I seriously doubt it.”

“She took you some stories, I believe. Do you still have them?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Three days ago I had one but Debbie took it back to work on it some more.”

At three o’clock my story was in Stanton Pritchard’s hands. He read it over and passed it to Hendrix for a head. “What’s next, Shaffer?” he asked.

I told him about tomorrow morning’s manhunt with the Boy Scouts; Pritch took notes.

“Seeing that I haven’t had lunch yet,” I added, “I thought I’d grab a bite on my over to the Probation Department.”

“Here’s a thought, for what it’s worth,” Pritch said, rubbing his chin. “If you were in stir, would you be likely to know how crazy Raglan is about his daughter?”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

I ordered my sandwich and then called the Department to make sure Milt Rosenberg could see me. Milt had been a parole officer for the last ten years, and had helped me on previous occasions when I needed information on individuals who had goofed themselves into the news. Today, however, according to Esther, Milt was just too busy to talk to me.

“I’m checking a news story. Trying to keep ahead of Chief Raglan, which is a remote chance.”

She said maternally, “It takes some doing to keep ahead of Joe Raglan. Can I help?”

“I’ve got to talk to Milt about some of his boys.”

“You think one of them pulled the job?” she asked dubiously.

“Raglan seems to think so.”

“How well I know. Check with me tomorrow, will you?”

I had a somewhat more leisurely lunch than I’d planned, then returned to my desk at the Bulletin and called Homicide again. Raglan had ordered Debbie’s locker opened at school, he told me, but all they found were two textbooks and a couple of items of clothing. No, no short stories.

I’d put off writing the side feature on Deborah Raglan long enough, so I batted it out at home. Despite my objectivity, Debbie came out smelling pretty good. And because of that same objectivity, she came out real, a clever, talented girl, with poise and self-assurance, a realistic outlook, a bit headstrong.

Pritch was happy, too, when I handed him the story Thursday morning. “I might want a favour some day,” I said. “You have somebody out there this morning to shoot the Boy Scouts combing the fields?”

“Matcha. Got back an hour ago. He’s probably in the photo lab.”

I found the huge photographer at the coffee machine. “Listen, Shaffer,” he said, “next time one of your friends gets me out of bed so early, try to have the body in a ground-floor apartment, okay. I must have walked off fifty pounds in the last two hours.”

“They find anything?”

“Yeah. One baseball, an old shoe and seventeen empty whiskey bottles.”

The story broke at nine-thirty, with a phone call from Raglan. “Come over here, Shaffer,” he said curtly. “I told you you’d get it first, but I won’t give it to you on the phone.”

I grabbed my briefcase, told Pritch where I was going, collected Matcha, and went.

When we arrived at Homicide we were sent straight back to Raglan’s office. Raglan picked up a letter from his desk and handed it to me. “This was dropped in a drive-up box in front of the main post office sometime between ten forty-five and eleven forty-five yesterday morning.”

The envelope was clipped to the letter, and bore a twelve noon postmark. The crudely printed address read: “Chief Raglan, Homocide Div., Fallbrook Police Dept., City.”

The note itself was a masterpiece of restraint: “Raglan, if you want the girl back alive, it will cost you $100,000 in unmarked twentys. You have 3 days to get it ready.” It was pencilled in bold black letters on a sheet of plain paper.

“Fingerprints?” I asked hopefully

Raglan shook his head. “The paper’s too porous to retain any. You want to take a shot of it?”

Matcha was already setting up his camera.

“What are you going to do, Joe?”

“Pay,” he said. “I’ve already ordered everyone off the case. I’ve got to assume Debbie’s alive; it’s my job now to keep her alive. She’s probably still in the city. And so is he.”

“Couldn’t you find them in three days?”

“I might scare him into killing her. I don’t want that.”

“Where are you going to get the money, Joe? A hundred thousand is quite a lot. If the department wants to hold a raffle I’ll help with publicity...”

“I’ll get it, one way or another. I hope. Whoever is behind this knows damn well I can’t raise a hundred grand. But he’s got the knife in, and he’s twisting it. It’s someone who hates me personally.”

“You don’t think the money interests him, then?”

“He’s interested; he just doesn’t expect to get it. But perhaps his greed is more powerful than his hatred. My only hope is to get word to him that he will get the money.”

Matcha put the ransom note back on Raglan’s desk and said, “You know what I think. Chief? This is the work of some young high school punk. If he hates you it’s only because you wouldn’t let your daughter go out with him.”

“What makes you say that?” Raglan asked.

“This ransom note. It’s like comic-book lettering. An experienced criminal would have clipped words out of newspapers and pasted them together. This guy practically signed his name.”

Raglan shook his head. “I wish he had used scissors and paste; he might have left a useable print.”

“I still say if you check with the school and see who’s been absent since Tuesday you’ll have him.”

“It’s an interesting theory,” Raglan admitted. “But the fact remains, he’s asked for a hundred thousand and I’ve got to assure him he’ll get it.”

“I can have it on the streets by nine o’clock tonight,” I offered.

“That’s too late, Shaffer. I promised you an exclusive; I want you to release me from that promise. This story has got to be on the noon news over every television and radio station in the area. Help me, will you, Shaffer?”

I told him, “Give me an open line and I’ll start the ball rolling.”

Matcha looked at me oddly. “You better get back to the paper, Chuck,” I told him. “A print of that note ought to go good as a line cut, don’t you think? But don’t tell Pritch what I’m doing, okay?”

Matcha shrugged and lumbered out.

It took me an hour to contact all the local media. At the end of that time Raglan said, “Shaffer, I’ve been thinking. This guy is sure I can’t raise that much money. But if, by some miracle, I succeed, he’ll figure I can make good any promise — or any threat.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“I’ve got to take the chance. Is there any way I could get on television tonight and talk to him personally?”

“A televised news conference?” I suggested.

He frowned. “They’d edit me down to about three minutes of film. I’ll need longer than that. Larry Brenner’s on tonight, isn’t he?”

“Are you serious? He’d tear you apart!”

The big detective smiled. “Nobody tears Joe Raglan apart, Shaffer. Get me in touch with him.”

I talked to Brenner first. He was delighted with the opportunity, and agreed to postpone the show he’d taped for tonight and substitute a live half-hour with Chief Raglan. Caught up in the spirit of the thing, I even called the Daily News and let them scoop me on page one. For that, I should have been awarded a Merit Badge.

Then I called the Department of Probation and Parole. Half an hour later, Milt Rosenberg looked at my list of ex-cons and checked off half a dozen of them. “Back in custody,” he explained. “Raglan picked them up this morning for questioning. Yesterday he interrogated almost everybody else on this list, and every last one of them has complained about it to me. Except for those six, who haven’t been released yet.”

“Complained?”

Rosenberg smiled. “It’s — ah — the manner of questioning they’re objecting to.”

I nodded. “The boys on the force sometimes forget their manners.”

“It’s creating a problem for me; in a couple of cases my parolees have lost their jobs already, on account of being picked up. The department is sometimes instrumental in finding jobs for them where only one man in the firm has to know they’re ex-cons, but you can’t keep that a secret when you’re picked up at work. It’s unfair, but what do you expect from a man like Raglan? He’s not interested in people — he’s interested in results. You want the home addresses of these men?”

“That’s what I’m here for, Milt.”

“Just be fair to ’em, all right?”

“Until one of these guys is charged with kidnapping Debbie Raglan, he won’t even get his name in the paper. But if it happens, I want all the information right at my fingertips.”

Rosenberg buzzed for his secretary. When she came in he handed her the list. “Esther, give Ted the current addresses of all these men, will you please?”

“Any of these guys hate Joe Raglan enough to kidnap his daughter?” I asked.

Rosenberg shook his head. “These men are specialists; they know one crime and they always do it the same way, maybe with minor improvements as they gain experience. Take Duncan; he’s a forger. A master of his trade — signatures, documents, the works. Raglan got him for preparing false ID that was used in the commission of a felony.”

“So?”

“This job was pulled by someone who knows the ins and outs of kidnapping — someone who probably is capable of murder. Either that or a master criminal, a jack of all trades, and they don’t exist except in the comic books.”

I, too, was unwilling to buy the Master Criminal idea, which left but one category to choose from. The hoodlum who had not yet settled down to a distinctive modus operandi. A young kid, maybe a smart high-school kid. I was willing to bet that in addition to brains he’d have a personality problem. A smart kid. Perhaps brilliant. But socially inept. Since he wouldn’t be much of a mixer he wouldn’t have the experience to make it with the girls. Outwitting the cops might have a strong appeal for this type of boy. And to kidnap the Chiefs daughter — that would be a project worthy of his intellect!

I was guessing now, and I didn’t want to risk Raglan’s scorn if I was guessing wrong. But there was nothing to prevent me from doing a little detective work on my own.

I called Victor Sorenson and arranged to meet him at a convenient bar later on. In the meantime I still had a story to write, to run alongside the personality profile I’d done of Debbie the night before. I wrote it fast and well, thankful that Raglan, for a change, was being good copy all by himself.

Sorenson was tall and angular, with a long face and a Nordic complexion, complementing his name.

“I ordered you a beer,” I said. “I hope that’s all right.”

He smiled crookedly. “My taste in beverages is completely in character with my budget. Have they located the missing manuscripts yet?”

“No, but a ransom note came in Raglan’s morning mail.”

“I heard about that. I understand he’s ordered everybody off the case.”

“Everybody but us amateurs. He wants to keep Debbie alive.”

“A noble motive,” Sorenson said “I’ve been trying to think of anything else I can tell you about her, without much success.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “I didn’t ask you here to talk about Debbie. I have someone else in mind.” I described the brilliant, rebellious high school boy I’d built up in my mind’s eye.

“Whew,” he said. “I know the type.”

“But do you know the boy?”

He smiled and sipped his beer. “Fifteen years ago that description might have fit me. Off hand, I can’t think of anyone quite like that in school right now.”

“Maybe a drop-out,” I suggested. “Someone attending school recently enough, though, to get to know Debbie, develop a crush on her. Someone who might have been in the habit of printing his name at the top of his assignments?”

“Why should that be significant?”

I took a clean sheet of paper from my briefcase and reconstructed the ransom note. I should have asked Matcha for a duplicate print of the note itself.

Sorenson studied my facsimile and nodded. “I’ve seen lettering like that. Not too often, but I’ve seen it. I can’t recall exactly where, but I’ll check around for you.”

“He’s not necessarily a dropout,” I said. “But if he’s still going to school, he’ll have been absent just as long as Debbie has.”

“Not necessarily,” Sorenson countered “If he’s as smart as you say he is, he’d be cautious enough to cover his tracks He would have kept coming to classes just as it nothing had happened at all. His ego would demand it; it’s all the kids are talking about now.”

“There’s one class he would have missed,” I said. “Yesterday morning, between ten forty-five and eleven forty-five, he was in front of the main post office mailing that ransom note.”

Sorenson smiled. “That narrows the field considerably.”

“Call me, will you?” I drained my beer.

“Sure. At the paper?”

“If I’m not there, ask for Stanton Pritchard. He’s the city editor. He’ll know where to reach me.”

After we’d parted, I thought about Victor Sorenson for a while. The man was handsome, with a brooding, intellectual quality which I imagined would have appealed to a girl like Deborah Raglan. I wondered if it could have been more than a quest for constructive criticism which had prompted her to take her stories to him. He was in his early thirties, old enough to be her father, but young enough not to be And he had poise and maturity. I wondered, too. if he might have seen in her something more than just a welcome relief from the general run of nincompoops he was required to instruct.

At nine o’clock that night the Larry Brenner Special Report came on; I taped it for reference.

Florence Raglan was there, a tragic figure of grief. Perhaps it was the crumpled handkerchief in her hands that did it. If I hadn’t known her, my heart would have gone out to her. Joe, too, had changed. By the time I’d watched five minutes, I realized I was looking at a side of Joe Raglan I’d never seen before.

The first quarter hour was devoted to the details of finding Debbie gone. Then Brenner concentrated on Debbie, delving into her likes, dislikes, anecdotes about her childhood, the warm, human way in which she blossomed into all-American girlhood. She, too, had changed, having acquired a sweetness and innocence that no one ever suspected. That was Brenner’s style of reporting. The thought of a brutal kidnapping was enough to send chills down the spine.

Brenner had a documentary look about him as he solemnly informed his audience that Chief Raglan had requested a few minutes in which to talk directly to his daughter’s kidnapper. Then the scene shifted to the tragic couple on the dais.

Raglan blinked and located the proper camera. “I want to assure you,” he said slowly, “that all official efforts to locate you have been stopped. No police technician has so much as seen your ransom note. I am making every effort to co-operate. You have asked for one hundred thousand dollars.” He paused, and his voice was almost inaudible. “I want my daughter back.”

Mrs. Raglan began to cry quietly. Joe’s arm went around her shoulder’s, and he looked straight at the camera as it dollied in. His face filled the screen. He wasn’t the tough cop any more. There was grief in his eyes as he continued, “Debbie, we’ll get you back. I don’t have the money yet. I don’t know where we’re going to get it, but we’ll get it if I have to die trying.”

His expression changed, became hard. “And you — whoever you are. If you hurt my kid I’ll track you down. Don’t hurt her, you hear me? You’ll get your money, every penny of it. You know my reputation. I’ve never gone back on my word yet.”

He was breathing hard, and his wife was sobbing openly, her head on his chest. The camera pulled back and the lighting changed, leaving the Raglans silhouetted in black against a white background.

Larry Brenner’s voice dominated the scene, “Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Raglan. Parents of Debbie Raglan, fifteen years old, kidnapped Tuesday evening while babysitting.”

The camera cut to Brenner’s face. His eyes flicked to one side and he frowned, then reached out to accept a slip of paper from an unseen hand. There was a moment of effective silence before he spoke again, rapidly and excitedly.

“We just had a telephone call pledging a cheque for one hundred dollars.”

Brenner’s voice faltered. “Chief Raglan, I’m sorry I couldn’t be the first, but I’ll match that hundred right now. We’ve only got a minute and I don’t know much about setting up fund-raising campaigns, but I’m sure there are many people in our audience tonight who will give what they can.”

They called it the DEBBIE FUND and a hastily scrawled placard bearing the station’s address filled the screen for Brenner’s remaining minute.

I switched the TV off and thought about the story I’d done for tomorrow’s Bulletin, which was already on the streets. The human slant. A word-picture of a girl as she really was — or as close to it as I could find out. An honest story, not a tear-jerker, not at all. Not the sort of story Brenner had pulled from the Raglans. And, I had to admit, not the sort of story which would prompt anyone to contribute a hundred dollars to the Debbie Fund.

I rewound the tape, skipping back and forth until I found the part I wanted, then copied it and added two paragraphs to it, feeling uneasy all the time. Then I went to the phone.

“Jackson,” I said, when I got through to him, “you watch the Larry Brenner show tonight?”

“Last half of it. I’m trying to figure what to take off the front page.”

“You’re the editor. How far along is it?”

“Early edition’s out — state edition is on press. I can have the change from home delivery in the city. Got something?”

I read him what I’d written. It wasn’t a complete story, but Jackson could handle the rest of it. When I got through I opened myself a beer, and wondered if I should try to match Brenner’s gesture with a hundred dollar cheque.

I flicked the TV set back on and confirmed my suspicion that the station was turning the Debbie Fund into an impromptu telethon. Just ninety minutes after Raglan’s appearance, the pledges were estimated at better than twenty thousand dollars.

Friday morning dawned bleak and overcast. I unfolded the morning paper and read what Jackson had done to the front page. It seemed as uninspiring as the weather.

Pritch frowned at me as I walked into the city room. He stood up as I approached his desk. “Ted,” he said quietly, “Raglan’s unhappy, boy. He’s so unhappy he’s threatened to sue the paper, you, me, Old Man Owens and two or three John Does.”

“For what?”

“For telling the world what Debbie is really like. Defamation of character.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’ve gone over that story with a magnifying glass and I can’t find anything libelous in it. But you know Owens and lawsuits.” He paused. “There’s only one condition under which Raglan won’t sue, and Mr. Owens decided to meet it. Your cheque is waiting at the cashier’s desk.”

“Now wait a minute!”

“Look at it this way,” Pritch said reasonably. “Raglan’s in a corner. He doesn’t have a hundred grand, but he’s worked out a way to get it. He sees you as a threat to the Debbie Fund and he panics. He’ll cool off once he gets her back. Don’t do anything rash. I’m not trying to hire a replacement.”

I nodded. “I guess what I resent most is being taken off this story.”

Pritch grinned. “How can I take you off a story if you don’t work for me any more?”

“You have a point,” I agreed. “My phone still work?”

“Yep.”

“I want to talk to Raglan.” Joe Raglan didn’t want to talk to me. I had the feeling, when I hung up, I’d be lucky not to be picked up on suspicion of spitting on the sidewalk.

I spent an hour at the typewriter, making notes. Then I picked up my briefcase, my hat and my check, and went at to find out why. There had to be a reason behind it, more valid than the theory Pritch had advanced. I probably knew Joe Raglan as well as anyone else in the city did. And the Joe Raglan I knew was incapable of panic.

I sat in the car for a long time an reviewed the case, right from the beginning. I consulted my notes and went over conversations I’d had with the people involved.

One of the first things Raglan had said to me was that there had been prowler reports before in that neighbourhood; Mrs. Van Drimmelen and Mrs. Phillips had contradicted that.

The time element seemed to have holes in it, too. I had been in Raglan’s office at ten-thirty when Debbie called. We had arrived at ten-forty. Therefore, within that ten minutes she must have disappeared. Van Drimmelen had tried to call her at ten-thirty and the phone was busy. That part of it checked.

But three times in the next ten minutes Van Drimmelen had tried to call her and it was still busy. She had finished talking to Joe, and was either conversing with someone else, or had been interrupted while attempting to place the call. But Van Drimmelen had called the operator and asked her to check the line; she had reported that the line was actually busy, that there was conversation in progress. That completed her report.

Was it my call to the Bulletin she’d plugged in on? No, because I didn’t talk for more than three minutes. The phone rang almost immediately after that, and it was Van Drimmelen. He claimed he’d waited half an hour before placing that particular call. Either the man’s time sense was drastically off, or there was something else amiss. I got out pencil and paper, trying to unscramble it.

It took about an hour, but suddenly I had the jellyfish by the handle, and when I held it up I didn’t like what I saw at all. There were a few things I’d have to check, but now that I knew what I was looking for it would be easy. I spent the next two hours feeding dimes into a phone booth.

Mrs. Van Drimmelen, at home, gave me one of the answers.

Her husband, at work, gave me another. “Yes,” he said, “I like to keep my watch fifteen minutes fast. I’m more frequently on time for appointments that way. I suppose it was actually about ten-fifteen when I started calling home.”

I wondered who Debbie would have been talking to before she called her father. It seemed strange that whoever it was had not volunteered the information. Unless, of course, it had been the kidnapper himself.

Fortunately, I was on good terms with Jay Evans, the local phone company manager. After an enlightening technical conversation, he cleared me with his Chief Special Agent, who promised me he’d get in touch with the verifying operator and have her call me right back. They both warned me that there was but one chance in a hundred that the girl would remember any one particular number.

By a stroke of luck, the operator remembered Liberty 11-776. “I thought it was a good omen,” she said, “seeing that it was one of the last numbers I checked before my relief came.”

“Could you tell me the exact time you checked it?”

“We don’t log verifications, but it must have been just a couple of minutes before ten-thirty.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t a couple of minutes before?”

“It couldn’t have been. My break is at ten-thirty.”

“Was the voice male or female?”

“Male, I think. But I wouldn’t know what was being said. I plug in just long enough to hear a voice. I’m too busy to listen longer than that.”

I dialled Evans again. He promised to check the toll charges on the Van Drimmelens’ phone for that evening, but informed me that, unless a message unit call had been placed, no record of the call would exist. Still, even if I drew a blank in that area, I had enough information to satisfy me, although it would hardly convince the District Attorney.

I called Mrs. Van Drimmelen back with one more question. The answer was no, their record collection was entirely composed of classical music.

I got some more change and called Milt Rosenberg, who was happy to give me the names of the men who’d lost their jobs as a result of being pulled in for questioning.

“Have any of them asked for permission to leave the city?” I inquired.

“No, Ted. Why?”

“Just a hunch. Call me at home if it happens.”

I cashed by cheque, then stopped at a music store on my way out to see James Duncan, the artist who had served three years on account of his excellent penmanship. I had to agree with Milt — Duncan wasn’t the type to try his hand at armed robbery. Or kidnapping. He wasn’t even a particularly good liar: his denial was so all-inclusive that I was sure now I was on the right track.

The rest of the afternoon I spent with a travel agent. We planned about six different vacations for me, with careful attention to flexibility and economy. I regretted not being able to make up my mind, but gave her to understand that I’d let her handle all the arrangements as soon as I reached a decision.

Then I went home and opened a beer and sat back and admired the clinical thoroughness of the whole swindle.

In a little while the telephone rang. I’d been expecting that.

“Victor Sorenson,” he said. “I’ve been trying to get you all day. They tell me at the paper you don’t work there any more.”

“Sad, but true. You find anything?”

“Not what I was looking for. Something better, I think. That was a fine profile you did of Deborah Raglan.”

“Thanks, but it lost me my job. Get to the point.”

“I’m getting there,” he assured me. “Your story was particularly effective alongside the photo of the ransom note. I wish you’d shown me the note itself yesterday, instead of just your reconstruction. Something struck me as odd the minute I saw the paper this morning. It may not mean anything, but...”

The paper was in plain sight. I stared at it for a moment, then grinned. “I see what you’re talking about,” I told him. “All by itself it wouldn’t mean much. I’m afraid. Comparison discloses it.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t spot it yourself,” Sorenson chided.

“You know, Victor, for a while I suspected you.”

“Really?” He sounded amused. “Why?”

“After what you told me about yourself I started thinking. You were one of the few who knew her whose whereabouts I couldn’t account for at the time the ransom note was mailed.”

“I was ill that morning. Who else can’t you account for?” he asked.

“One of them was Raglan himself. But he doesn’t count.”

“What are you going to do about this?”

Sorenson was asking too many questions. “I think I’ll sit on it,” I said cautiously. “See what else develops. You spotting the error confirms something I suspected, but letting the information go any further right now could queer the whole thing.”

“I’ll keep quiet,” Sorenson promised.

We chatted a few minutes more. Afterwards, I opened another beer and settled back to wait for Rosenberg to call. He did, about half an hour later. When he accused me of being psychic, I felt so good I considered for a moment applying for Joe Raglan’s job. But you have to work your way up from the bottom for that, paying careful attention to your reputation.

“What’s his name, Milt?”

“Eddie Rocco. He’s nineteen; served six months for grand theft auto. He’s kept his nose clean since he got out, but being picked up killed his job. I guess Raglan isn’t as ruthless as I thought. When he found out, he got on the phone and found the kid another job where nobody knows he’s done time.”

“That was real nice of him. Rocco tell you this?”

“Raglan called me himself a few minutes ago to see if I’d approve.”

“What city?”

“New York.”

“You tell Joe about my hunch?”

“No. Should I have?”

“I’d just as soon you didn’t. Joe and I aren’t on the best of terms these days.”

“He’ll cool off,” Milt assured me. “He’s proved he’s human, anyway.”

I hung up and laughed, then. And I put some records on and laughed some more.

I watched television for a while. Someone in the city was sitting on one hundred thousand dollars in unmarked twenty-dollar bills. That was on the midnight news. Raglan had delivered them as per instructions in a second mis-spelled note, and he refused to tell even the FBI where he’d taken the money until Debbie was back. The TV played it up big. Would she be returned alive? Or would her body be discovered half-buried in a shallow grave?

I knew the answer to that one. I was one of two people in the entire nation who knew the answer to that one. Sorenson suspected the truth, of course, and maybe Florence Raglan did, too.

The next morning, Saturday, I conferred at length with that travel agent. It took us about ten minutes to find the information I was looking for, now that I knew the destination, but she was such a charming girl that it was an hour before I left her office.

I drove over to the telephone company then, after calling to make sure Jay Evans would be in. “In that time bracket,” he said, “it must have been a local call. There was a message-unit call about two hours earlier, though.” Reluctantly, he gave me the number.

“Who belongs to that number, Jay?”

He told me. “You think it’s important? Should I call Raglan?”

“No. That fits in with one of her homework assignments. She was just checking some facts.”

Evans looked crestfallen. “Well,” he shrugged, “I tried. I’m sorry.”

I patted his shoulder. “Thanks.”

I was whistling as I walked out of the telephone building. Maybe it was because I had another excuse to visit my favourite travel agent.

Once a day, after that, I went for a drive. It took me half an hour to get there; I’d spend forty-five minutes watching people come and go; I’d spend another half-hour getting back. I got to know the parking attendant quite well, and discovered that it takes ten days for a car to qualify for impound. I browsed around the lot until I found the car for which I was looking.

Raglan, after it was obvious to everyone that the kidnapper had failed to keep his end of the bargain, resumed the search. I followed it on the front pages with considerable interest. It annoyed me for a while, not seeing my byline there, but I certainly couldn’t write those stories if I was persona non grata at the Detective Bureau. I grinned ruefully when I realized that most of my former friends were useless to me now as news sources. I decided I’d have to start making some new friends.

“Our pigeon has flown,” Raglan was quoted one day. “With the money in his pocket, he doesn’t need Debbie any more. If he were going to release her, he’d have done so earlier. The fact that he didn’t leads me to believe he couldn’t risk her describing him, and I am forced to assume that my daughter is dead.”

Reminded of his promise to “track you down”, Raglan was asked if he’d resign to do so. “I may apply for a leave of absence,” he said.

My daily drives continued. They were quite pleasant. Nine days had gone by since Debbie had vanished. And in the parking lot, the car I’d been checking on was gone.

Clutching my ever-present briefcase, I hurried into the airport. I had forty-five minutes — plenty of time. Even with time out for a phone call, it only took me ten.

Raglan was in the coffee shop, sitting at a table which commanded a fine view. With him was a nervous young man in a suit which was obviously new and apparently uncomfortable. They were conversing and didn’t notice me as I approached. I pulled up a chair.

“Hello, Shaffer,” Raglan said. If he was surprised it didn’t show in his face.

“Hi, Joe. I’ll bet your friend is Eddie Rocco.”

“You’ve got quite a memory for faces.”

“Never saw him before in my life. I’m not working for the Bulletin any more, or hadn’t you heard?”

“I’m sorry about that. You’re a good reporter.”

“And you used to be a good cop. But we can let bygones alone. I haven’t forgotten how to write, but I need some technical advice. You know how the criminal mind works better than I do. Maybe you can help me.”

“Buy you a drink?” Raglan asked.

I looked at my watch. “Yeah. It’s half an hour before plane time. I won’t take that long. I’m thinking of switching to mystery stories, Joe. It’s a shame Debbie isn’t here, she might be able to give me a few pointers.”

The Rocco kid blinked at us, first at me, and then at Joe.

“You say you’re having troubles with a plot?” Raglan asked.

“Oh, I’ve got it all worked out,” I assured him. “I’m basing it loosely on your daughter’s tragic disappearance. I’ll change the names, of course, so there won’t be any grounds for a lawsuit. Anyway, this girl and her father are pretty close — two peas out of the same pod. Daughter is intensely interested in Daddy’s work, catching criminals, you know. I have no choice but to make him a detective.”

“Do,” Raglan said, with a trace of amusement.

“They decide to vanish, take a lot of money to a foreign country. Cuba would be ideal, if it weren’t for the international situation. I think it would be safer in Mexico, or one of the Banana Republics.”

“Venezuela is pretty,” Raglan observed.

“You’ve got a point there,” I admitted. “Trouble is, they don’t have a lot of money, so the girl sits down and figures out a way to do it. Probably with Daddy’s help.”

Raglan smiled. “It’d be better if she worked it out on her own. Make her a real bright kid.”

Rocco sipped his coffee nervously.

I nodded. “With a clinical mind. Anyway, they decide to stage a kidnapping for ransom. That precludes any immediate suspicions that the girl is running away and, if they can figure out a way to raise it, guarantees them enough money to live on for a few years, especially if they invest it wisely.”

“You have all the details worked out?”

“Most of them. First, they need a good place to vanish from; for some reason they can’t use their own home.” I looked at him expectantly.

“Too many sharp-eyed neighbours around,” Raglan said. “Or the physical layout would make things difficult.”

I nodded enthusiastically. “Wrong sort of neighbourhood. A wife who’s home most of the time. Third floor apartment and all that. Anyway, they pick a spot where the kid can babysit regularly and get to know the habits of the neighbours. This has to be done carefully, because the timing is very essential. It takes about three months before they’re ready. Daddy has access to a car that couldn’t be traced too easily. An old one would be ideal; nondescript. If anybody spotted it, I doubt they’d even be able to identify the make. Only Daddy and his daughter would be likely to know.”

Raglan’s eyes crinkled. “Building some traps into this, aren’t you?”

“Got to,” I said. “The girl’s character is the major trap, Joe. She’s too precise, too clinical. She never touches anything without permission. Even a hi-fi. I’ve worked out a real clever way for her to be in two places at once.”

Rocco, by now, had stopped pretending a lack of interest.

“When you take a phone off the hook and dial one number, any number but 0, you kill the dial tone and open the line. In case somebody tried to call in they’d get a busy signal. Of course, if they really wanted to get through, they’d ask for a verifying operator to check the line. The operator plugs in just long enough to hear a voice; she’s too busy to listen very long. But how do you get a voice on the line when the house is empty? Turn a TV set on? No, it would probably sound like a TV programme. A tape recorder with conversation on it? That’s out, because anybody could spot the gimmick if they found a tape recorder running.”

“Sounds like a problem,” Joe said.

I grinned. “I bought three Shelly Berman records the other day. You’ve heard of him? The comic who does the telephone conversation routines?”

“This puts the girl in two places at once?”

“Sure. She has the old car parked in the alley. At ten o’clock, or even a little before, she makes the house look like somebody broke in and violent things happened. She calls Daddy so he can come over with a schoolbook and verify that he saw her at ten o’clock. He might be bringing her some clothes, too, to change into boy’s clothing, perhaps?”

I looked at Eddie Rocco, but he just blinked at me.

“She might even cut her hair. Daddy could get rid of the clippings, along with what she was wearing when she left home. She leaves in the old car — after the phone is off the hook with an open line and the record is on the hi-fi. Daddy drives to his office. The girl drives to the airport, where she picks up her ticket for faraway places — Venezuela, did you say?”

Raglan nodded.

“Obviously,” I continued, “if the plane for South America leaves at ten-fifty, and the girl is half an hour away at ten-thirty, she’d never make it. But it works out nicely if she calls the airport at eight and leaves at ten. I’ll admit her means of transportation had me puzzled until I found the car in the lot.”

Raglan frowned; Eddie Rocco looked worried.

“Daddy wouldn’t want the car impounded,” I went on, “for that might have unpleasant side-effects. But it would take two people to drive to the airport and collect it. Daddy and someone else — somebody he could trust. I doubt he’d pick Mummy, since she’s the one he and the girl are skipping out on. He’d look around for somebody who was in a corner. He might even put that somebody in the corner. That would be a nice touch, right in character with Daddy’s usual way of doing things. Someone who, with a little persuasion could be convinced that Daddy could do him some real good.” I looked at Eddie Rocco. “Maybe somebody who’d just lost his job.”

“When did you decide it was a swindle?” Raglan asked suddenly.

I countered with a question of my own. “What’s the most precious thing in the world to a writer?”

“Seeing his name in print?”

“No, Joe. There’s glamour to that, the first time or two it happens. But there’s something far more precious than his byline. His manuscripts. Especially if he’s a beginner. Every word is sort of sacred. If he had to leave everything else he owned behind, he’d take his stories with him, because they’re the only things he couldn’t replace with money.”

“I guess you know writers better than I do,” Raglan admitted.

“I guess I do, Joe.”

“I can put together the rest of the story myself,” Raglan said. “You got a hero in this thing? A detective? A fatal mistake and all that?”

“Sure. A newspaperman. I’m prejudiced towards my own kind. He’s in the detective’s office when the girl calls — from the airport — to report a prowler. There’s no way to tell if the babies’ parents have tried to call their babysitter — Do I have to go into details?”

“Smooth,” Raglan said. “Just tell me the mistakes. In fiction, the crook always makes mistakes. Happens in real life, too, sometimes.”

“Not so much mistakes, Joe. Circumstances. Like, how is he to know that Van Drimmelen’s watch is always fifteen minutes fast? Or that the man’s wife is going to brag about how the girl never touched a thing without asking first. And how she didn’t ask to play the hi-fi. Or that anyone would suspect the Van Drimmelens wouldn’t be likely to own a Shelly Berman album? Or that the girl spells homicide with two o’s and one I, instead of the other way around — and that her English teacher would remember such a thing? It’s a common enough error, but when it shows up on a ransom note too, you know?”

I smiled. “I owe you a lot, Joe. You told me once that a good detective gets to know the people he’s pitted against. The better he knows them, the easier it is to figure what they might do next. Same thing goes for a good writer. He knows his characters so well that the minute they step out of line it’s like a red flag. Once you decide what a character wants, you figure out the most intelligent way for him to go about getting it, consistent with his limitations, of course. Conversely, if you know his limitations and can see what he’s doing, it’s fairly easy to determine what he wants, and what he’ll do to attain it.”

“That’s pretty heavy theory, Shaffer.”

“Let me put it in terms of our story, then,” I offered. “This reporter knows Daddy pretty well, and he gets a funny feeling when Daddy acts out of character. And when he gets a real incentive to use his imagination, things start falling into place. He starts figuring how he would do it if he were planning a swindle. And he starts checking back.”

“Suspicions,” Raglan said. “That’s all you’ve got, Shaffer.”

“Suspicions confirmed,” I corrected. “This is a technological age, Joe. Remember I told you timing was absolutely vital to this plot? Even picking the right night for Debbie to be kidnapped. Why did it have to be a Tuesday? What advantage was there having everyone think she vanished at ten-thirty when she really lit out at ten? I didn’t have the answer to that one until a week ago, when I discovered she’d made a phone call to a certain airline.”

“What does that prove?”

“Have patience, Daddy, I’m getting to it. Flights to Mexico City are not a nightly occurrence from here, Joe. They happen twice a week, Tuesday nights at ten-fifty, Friday afternoons at three forty-five. And there’s only one airline offering that service. So I asked myself, why not Friday? Wrong time of day for the vanishing act. And the wrong day, seeing that Daddy had to go on the Larry Brenner show while the story was still hot.”

Raglan nodded. “How’d you discover the call to the airport?”

“Another one of those circumstances over which you had no control. The Van Drimmelens had been having babysitter trouble; it even showed up in their phone bill. So they subscribed to a message monitoring service, which makes a record of any calls placed from their phone to numbers outside the local toll-free area. Not only were you ignorant of this, Joe, but nobody would have any reason to look for something like that.”

“I see.”

“It took me a while to locate the car,” I admitted. “But I knew you couldn’t leave it there. Today it was gone, and I figured you’d be gone soon, too. It took me about three minutes to find out that you’d been granted a leave of absence, ostensibly to follow up a lead in New York. Correct me if I’m wrong, Joe. In New York you will disappear, no muss, no fuss. It may be weeks before anyone starts wondering what happened to you. They’ll check with the airline. Yes, a Joseph P. Raglan was delivered to the New York airport. That’s one more reason you need Mr. Rocco, isn’t it?”

The kid looked as if he was ready to make a run for it, but Raglan held him back with a gesture. “Tell me more, Shaffer,” he said quietly.

“There’s an expert forger kicking around,” I said, “who hotly denies having any beef against you, or even having seen you since he was paroled. But the records show that he was picked up for questioning the day after Debbie disappeared. An experience like that certainly wouldn’t have slipped the man’s mind, would it?”

Raglan looked thoughtful.

“And then,” I continued, “Eddie here asks permission to move to a job in New York. Turns out Daddy is the one who has assured the job, which the reporter and the parole officer both agree is quite out of character. There is also a way to get from here to New York where you fly to New Orleans first. Now if Eddie were to be holding a ticket with Daddy’s name on it, and Daddy were to have Eddie’s ticket — plus a forged passport — it would be simple for the ersatz Mr. Rocco to change planes in New Orleans and fly to South America.

“And that touch with the money was clever as all get out, Joe. Technically, I don’t even know if you stole it, because people gave it to you as an outright gift.” I grinned. “When you come right down to it, you didn’t ask ’em for it. It was Brenner who did that. I’ll admit I like the idea of Brenner being forced to give it all back to the donors.”

“Me, too,” Raglan admitted. “Especially as a large percentage of the gifts were anonymous.”

“Exactly. But tell me, Joe — how will you get the money out of the country? It’s not too big a package, but sizeable enough to present difficulties.”

It was Raglan’s turn to grin. “Not if it’s broken up into small packages. But I’ll never admit it.”

I shrugged. “And I was looking for something complicated,” I said, smiling ruefully. “Why should I blow the whistle, Joe? I keep thinking of poor little Debbie, waiting for you down in Venezuela, an innocent, inexperienced, naive little fifteen-year-old. What in the world would she do without you?”

“What do you want, part of the take?”

“Please!” I protested. “You earned that, Joe. You and Debbie.”

“You figure things out pretty good,” Raglan said thoughtfully.

Then he added abruptly. “You’ve got your story. What are you going to do about it?”

“Not a damn thing, Joe. Florence has the furniture, you’ve got your freedom and your daughter and enough money to get by on, hundreds of people have the good glow from knowing they’ve helped. I’m not hurting any — I’ll be back on the Bulletin payroll in a week or so, just as soon as it’s definitely established that you’re missing. And if I write this up as fiction I ought to make back part of the salary I’ve missed.”

Joe Raglan stared at me uncomprehendingly. Then he held out his hand.

“Thanks,” he said. “Aren’t you afraid if I get caught between here and the border you’ll be held as an accessory?”

“Not a chance,” I said. “I haven’t got one witness who actually saw anything happen, so how could I prove any of it? Of course that forged passport in your pocket might be a little embarrassing, but Jim Duncan would be back in stir if he testified against you. So would Eddie here. It’d be your word against mine, and I’m the first to admit that it’s all conjecture.”

“But it would look good on the front page of the Bulletin, wouldn’t it?” he asked. “I still don’t get your motive.”

“Try revenge,” I said. “I was reminded recently that Mr. Owens doesn’t read anything but the financial section. You’d better hurry, Mr. Rocco,” I added. “Or you’ll miss your plane.”

I picked up my briefcase and walked out then. Murphy was waiting in the lobby, as we had arranged.

“Hi, Chief,” I said, patting the briefcase. “I’ve got it all on tape.”

I turned and watched as the young cop strolled into the coffee-shop. Pick yourself a cop, any cop, Pritch had said. Make him look like a hero. And you’re the first one he calls when something big happens.

I smiled. In all that seventeen years I’d never really liked Joe Raglan.