Snatched: A Novella

CHAPTER FOUR

Will kept Jenner in cuffs as he led the man down the corridor to the men’s room. He expected protests or outrage, but maybe part of Jenner knew that he deserved to be duckwalked like a prisoner. Or maybe he was so certain he’d get out of this that he was content to suffer the small travails.

“Here,” Will said, holding open the door. His sleeve pulled back. He saw Jenner note the time. Obviously, he liked what he saw. The snarky smile was back.

Will followed him into the small room. One toilet. One sink. An overhead fan that rattled like an old man’s lungs. Will took out his handcuff key and removed the bracelets. Jenner rubbed his wrists, trying to get the circulation back into them. He asked Will, “What were you doing in that bathroom?”

“I’ll answer if you do.”

Jenner smiled, showing his cracked teeth. He winced from the pain. “You should feel lucky I’m not going to sue you for dental costs.” He turned back to the sink, his eye on Will’s as he turned on the hot water faucet. “I’m sure implants will run into the tens of thousands.”

“You’ve got the money.”

“Do I?” he asked. He must’ve read the answer in Will’s eyes. “I guess you tracked my name through my boarding pass. I wonder how? I didn’t have it on me. Maybe one of my fellow passengers gave up my seat number?”

Will shrugged.

“The credit card wouldn’t go back to me. Google, maybe?”

Will didn’t answer.

“It’s amazing how privacy has gone out the window since 9/11. I’m surprised you haven’t marked me for rendition.”

“We’re looking into it.”

Jenner chuckled good-naturedly. He cupped some warm water into his hands, leaned down, and slurped. Will waited as he swished the water around inside his mouth. Jenner spat a pink stream of blood into the sink. He repeated the process twice before he stood back up. “I know Eleanor isn’t talking. Her lawyer makes your boss look like a puppy dog.”

Will doubted that, though he took on board that Eleanor Fielding probably had a woman for a lawyer. Will should’ve known better, but he was always surprised by the awful things some women got up to. He wanted to think it was for the money and not for spite. Or worse.

“She’s quite a piece of work,” Jenner said, meaning Amanda. “Thinks she’s smarter than she is. It’s a cop’s curse.”

Will wasn’t feeling so smart at the moment. So far, Jenner had managed to play him like a fiddle. Will tried to feed into the man’s ego, saying, “You’re smart.”

“That I am,” Jenner agreed. “It really is a burden sometimes-to be smarter than everyone else.” He indicated the toilet, which was side-on to the sink. “You mind?”

Will turned his back to the man, though he could still see his reflection in the mirror. Jenner’s gaze stayed down. He obviously wasn’t going to try anything.

Will felt for the stem of his watch. He inched the hands forward a bit more. It was a delicate balance. In the last twenty-four hours, Jenner had traveled across three time zones and back. He would be tired from the flights. Maybe exhausted from adrenaline and caffeine. The stewardess on his flight said he’d drunk at least a whole pot of coffee during the four-and-a-half-hour journey.

Even an innocent person would be feeling disoriented right now.

“Ahh.” Jenner let out a needlessly dramatic sigh as he finished at the toilet. He shook himself a few times. He flushed, then turned toward the door.

Will blocked his way, nodding toward the faucet.

“Of course. Where are my manners?” Jenner went to the sink. He pumped some soap into his palm, then held his hand under the faucet sensor. Nothing happened. “I hate these damn things. They never work.”

Will didn’t bother to agree with him. He waved his hand under the sensor. Still no water. Will tried again. The water came on hard and fast, splashing up on both of them.

“Always happens,” Jenner said, lathering his hands.

Will looked down at his pants. They were wet in the front, the same as Jenner’s.

The faucet cut off. Jenner said, “Towel?”

Will pulled a few paper towels out of the dispenser, making sure his watch showed. He caught Jenner’s reflection in the mirror. If the man was surprised that time was flying by, he didn’t seem to register it.

Again, Jenner turned toward the door.

Again, Will blocked him. He took out his handcuffs.

“Really?” Jenner asked. He sounded disappointed, as if they had somehow bonded in the toilet. Finally, he held out his hands.

Will shook his head. With exaggerated reluctance, Jenner turned around. He held out his hands behind him. It took everything inside Will not to wrench Jenner’s arms up so hard that both his rotator cuffs ripped. Instead, he carefully placed the handcuffs on the man’s wrists and snapped them closed.

Will opened the door. He let Jenner walk out on his own steam, not pushing him or kicking him down the hallway. Will wanted so badly to move his watch forward, to inch away the time, but he made himself keep one hand on Jenner’s elbow and the other at his side. Will put his hand in his jacket pocket. Abigail’s little shoe was still there. He should put it in evidence. He should log it for trial.

Will wrapped his hand around the slipper. It almost disappeared in his grip.

Will sat on a metal bench outside the airport. It was a bright, sunny day, but he’d chosen the underground breezeway as the spot to lick his wounds. This was where he’d lost sight of Joe Jenner. The cop had pulled up. Travis McGhee had beeped the horn in his red truck. Will had turned around and Jenner and the girl were gone.

He held Abigail’s shoe in his hand. The trim was coming off in the back, probably from being dragged. He should get some superglue and fix it. Will imagined these were the type of shoes a little girl might love. She’d want them back. She’d need them when she got back on a plane and headed home to her parents.

Will closed his eyes. He was hardly some kind of New Age freak, but he tried to imagine Abigail safe in her mother’s arms. The little girl was thin and bony. Her mother probably would be, too. They’d have the same yellow-blonde hair and blue eyes. Abigail’s mother would hold on to her and squeeze her so tight that Abigail would never get away again.

That was what he wanted to imagine, not the truth, which was probably closer to a nightmare.

The Levi’s Call was still in effect. Highway patrol had scrambled every cop on their payroll to scour the interstates and back roads. All the DOT bulletin boards over the highways listed Abigail’s height, weight, eye and hair color, approximate age, and the time in which she’d gone missing. Hundreds of calls had already come in, but none of them had panned out.

Will looked at his watch, which was still ahead by fifty minutes. He kept checking on Jenner, inching the hands forward on his watch each time before he went into the room and offered a soda or a toilet break or just sat across from him and watched Jenner stare blankly at the wall.

Will would adjust his watch up another twenty minutes before he went back in with the man. Jenner was clearly exhausted. The last two times Will had checked on him, he’d been asleep, his head on the table. He’d clearly lost track of time. Another five minutes skipped forward. Another ten. There was no telling what the magic hour was, but Will would keep leading Jenner along, moving the time ahead, until Jenner felt like he was safe.

Their only hope was that they’d have enough time left to save the girl.

Abigail had been missing for three hours now-at least that they knew of. There was no telling where she’d come from before that, whether or not a mother and father were looking for her. Eleanor Fielding had worked in social services. Maybe Abigail was a foster child.

So much for the image of Abigail in her mother’s arms.

Predators tended to pick easy targets, and the foster system was so bereft of funding that caseworkers could barely keep up anymore. Many of them didn’t have cell phones, laptops, or sometimes even offices. Seattle alone had seen dozens of child deaths in the foster system. Florida had a habit of losing their kids. Washington, D.C., had so many neglect cases on the books that they could barely adjudicate them all. There was no telling whether or not Abigail was one of the missing.

At this late hour, she might already be one of the dead.

The doors behind Will slid open. Faith sat down beside him on the bench. She had a radio in her hand. It was tuned to the Atlanta Police frequency, the volume turned down low. Will could hear the soft murmur of cops chattering back and forth.

Faith said, “Nothing,” because she knew that was the first thing he’d ask. “Is that her shoe?”

Will handed Faith the ballet slipper with its pink trim and smiling Hello Kitty.

“It’s so small.” Faith pressed her lips tightly together. She had a daughter in diapers and a son in college. As hard as these cases hit everyone, they seemed to hit Faith doubly so.

Will asked, “How old do you have to be before you dress yourself?”

Faith sighed as she thought it through. “It varies from kid to kid. You’re pointing things out that you want to wear around two, two and a half, but you can’t dress yourself. Three or four, you’re putting stuff on, but sometimes it’s backward or you put the wrong shoe on the wrong foot. By five, you’re pretty much able to dress on your own. Unless you’re a boy. Then, you can’t do it until you’re at least twenty-five. Maybe thirty.”

Will allowed a smile at the attempted levity, but all he could think about was Abigail picking out her clothes. This morning or yesterday or whenever it was, she’d taken the flowery dress, the matching tights and shoes, and put them on herself. He imagined her smiling at her reflection in the mirror, maybe twirling around.

Faith interrupted his thoughts. “The FBI is chomping to take this over.”

“I’m sure Amanda’s happy about that.”

“They’re not being assholes,” Faith allowed. “They’re giving her everything she’s asks for. Nobody wants this thing blowing up in our faces.”

Will didn’t say that he thought it had exploded a few hours ago. “I keep thinking of her with her mother.”

“That’s something good to hold on to. I’m going to think about that, too.”

“You know it’s not likely.”

Faith said, “I don’t care if it takes the rest of my life, Joe Jenner’s going to end up in jail.”

Will nodded, hoping that didn’t end up being their consolation prize.

“I don’t see how you managed to sit across from the smug prick without beating him senseless.”

“It’s what he wants,” Will realized. That was why Jenner kept antagonizing them. Part of it was the lawyer’s sense of superiority, but a greater part was the satisfaction he got from seeing the police so out of control.

Faith said, “It’s the only crime I don’t understand.” She handed back the shoe. “Robbery, murder, even rape I can sort of get. But a kid?” She shook her head. “It’s disgusting. Something is seriously wrong with a person who would do that.”

Will didn’t know what to say. It seemed pointless to agree with her.

He sat back on the bench and stared at the underground parking garage. He’d spent the last thirty minutes going through each step he’d taken after he followed Jenner outside. He did it again now: The cop. The Cowboy in the red truck. Running into the garage. Jenner had changed his appearance. How long did that take? Removing the wig and glasses would take two, three seconds, tops. Reversing the jacket and zipping off the bottom part of his pants while still holding on to the girl would be another matter.

Abigail wouldn’t have just stood there while he changed. She would’ve run. Will was certain of that.

Regardless, they hadn’t found the wig or any of Jenner’s disguise in the many trashcans that were placed around the garage. The stairwells were empty. The spaces between cars absent his stash. Maybe Jenner’s hand-off partner had taken everything, but the question remained: how did he or she escape? Every single departing car had been checked. Every exit had been sealed off.

Logic dictated there had to be something they were missing.

Vanessa Livingston had sent a team of men to run the license plate of every vehicle inside the parking structure. According to his driver’s license, Jenner had a black Bentley Continental registered in his name. A quick call to the parking attendant at the Ritz-Carlton verified the Bentley was in the residents’ area of the garage.

Abigail wasn’t secreted away in a vehicle. She wasn’t taken out in a service vehicle. She wasn’t inside the airport. Was she locked in the trunk of a car? Did Jenner have another automobile hidden in the parking structure? Was his backup plan to simply let the girl suffocate?

Will’s throat worked. He felt overwhelmed with the uselessness of it all. The fuzzy picture of mother and child was being replaced with a darker possibility. Will had seen dead children before. The image was hard to get out of your mind. It was the sort of thing you saw when you went to bed at night. It was the sort of thing that popped back into your brain for the rest of your life. Especially times like now.

Abigail.

Why hadn’t Will taken her from Jenner? Why hadn’t he at least talked to her in the restroom? So what if Jenner had ended up being her father or stepfather or grandfather or uncle. If Will had been on the other side of the situation, if Will had a daughter and some cop stopped him to ask what was going on, he might be mad at first, but then he’d have to appreciate someone looking out for his kid.

Faith, as usual, read his thoughts. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I should’ve talked to her.”

“If I was in the airport and you leaned down to talk to my kid, I’d kick you in the face so hard your eyes would be spinning before you hit the ground.”

“That’s different,” Will said. Women were more cautious around children. Especially women like Faith Mitchell, who ran a background check on her mailman because she thought he was too friendly.

“It’s not different,” Faith said. “You did everything you could, Will. We’re all doing everything we can.”

He hated the defeated sound in her voice, mostly because it mirrored his own feelings.

“I want to run through it again,” Will said. Faith nodded, and he started back from the beginning, telling her about sitting in the toilet stall, peeling off the Band-Aid so that the flusher would go off. When he got to the part about waving his arms for the camera in the pedestrian tunnel, he stood up. He told her about finding the shoe, heading out to where they now stood in front of the exit doors.

Will took her down the sidewalk, continuing the story: The red truck. The Cowboy. The cop pulling up in his cruiser. Will’s attention was diverted for a few seconds. He lost sight of Jenner and the girl.

Will turned to Faith, remembering, “There was a silver Prius.”

“Four door?”

Will nodded. “I heard it pull up behind me.”

“If you heard it, then it wasn’t going slow,” Faith pointed out. The car was virtually silent at speeds under fifteen miles per hour. “Anything else?”

“Black interior. White female driver. I saw through to the trunk. The car was empty.” Will tried to remember what the woman looked like. It had all happened so fast. He’d wrenched open the door and scanned the interior of the car. “I scared the shit out of her,” he said. “She drove off like a bat out of hell.”

“Drove up there?” Faith indicated the steep turn at the end of the breezeway. The four-lane road narrowed to two as it merged into traffic from upstairs. The road then turned back into a six-lane stretch that allowed drivers to either loop back around to the South or North Terminal or jump onto the interstate.

Will said, “Call it in.”

Faith already had the radio to her mouth. “Mitchell to Livingston?”

Vanessa Livingston’s voice came back immediately. “Ten-four?”

“I need exit tape on a silver Prius leaving the South Terminal breezeway at approximate time of disappearance.”

“Roger.”

Faith dropped the radio to her side. “Where was the Prius parked when you opened the door?”

Will walked a few more feet and gauged his position. “Right here.” He pointed toward the parking garage. “When I saw Jenner again, he was over there.”

“Was that when you called me on the phone?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, back up,” Faith said. “You saw the Prius. You ran up to it?”

“Yeah,” Will said. “I opened the door and checked it. No one was inside. Just a woman. Dark hair, I think. She put her hands to her face. Like I said, she was scared. Surprised.” He shook his head. There was a reason cops hated eyewitness testimony. Nine times out of ten, it was wrong. So much had been going on when Will was chasing Jenner that he wasn’t even sure the Prius was silver anymore. “Like I said, the car was empty. I could see straight through to…” His voice trailed off. He looked up the road. He could see cars from the upstairs lanes.

Faith asked, “What is it?”

Will didn’t answer. Instead, he jogged up the road, taking the same path toward the exit as the Prius.

There was a bend in the lower road as it rose to meet traffic exiting the main terminal entrance. To discourage pedestrians from walking up the road and possibly getting hit by a car, the garden crew had planted a bunch of black locusts, a pollution-resistant bush that produces a creamy white flower and tiny, razor-sharp thorns at the base of each leaf.

Will pushed his way into the dense bushes, not caring that his hands were getting torn up. His jacket got caught on a long branch. The material stuck to the thorns like Velcro.

“What are you doing?”

Will ripped away his jacket so he could go farther into the bushes. “The TSA agent told me it takes fifteen minutes to completely lock down the airport. We were still inside that window when I caught Jenner. The Prius could’ve left just under the wire.”

“But you said the car was empty.”

“It was when I searched it.” Will stepped onto a branch, pushing down the barbs with his foot. “They both panicked. The Prius took off. Jenner ran into the garage.” He glanced at Faith to see if she was following his logic. “The road curves up right here. I was back inside the breezeway talking to you on the phone. This is the only place they could’ve handed Abigail off without me seeing Jenner or the car.”

“Or the security cameras seeing them.” Faith put her hands on her hips. “The next camera would pick up the Prius at the split that takes you onto the interstate.”

Will’s finger was bleeding. He wiped his hand on his pants, stepping deeper into the bushes.

And then he found it.

A cheap brown wig, a pair of black plastic glasses, two legs from a pair of zippered cargo pants and-worst of all-a little girl’s flowery dress with pink trim.