The abduction

Chapter 8

Theo preferred not to stay at school after classes and watch the girls play soccer. He himself did not play soccer, not that he had the choice. An asthma condition kept him away from strenuous activities, but even without the asthma he doubted he would be playing soccer. He had tried it as a six-year-old, before the asthma, and never got the hang of it. When he was nine, while playing baseball, he collapsed at third base after hitting a triple, and that ended his short career in team sports. He took up golf.

Mr. Mount, though, loved soccer, had even played in college, and was offering extra credit to students who hung around for the game. Plus, there was an unwritten rule at Strattenburg Middle School that the girls cheered for the boys, and vice versa. Any other time, Theo would have happily watched from the bleachers, taking casual notice of the game but really sizing up the twenty-two girls on the field and those on the bench as well. But not today. He wanted to be elsewhere, on his bike, handing out the MISSING flyers, doing something to aid in the search for April.

It was a terrible day for a game of any kind. The Strattenburg kids were distracted. The players and their fans lacked energy. Even the opposing team, from Elksburg, forty miles away, seemed subdued. When another helicopter flew over ten minutes into the game, every girl on the field paused for a second and looked up in apprehension.

As expected, Mr. Mount gradually made his way over to a group of women. The worst kept secret at school was that Mr. Mount had his eye on Miss Highlander, a stunning seventh-grade math teacher just two years out of college. Every boy in the seventh and eighth grades had a desperate, secret crush on Miss Highlander, and evidently Mr. Mount had some interest as well. He was in his mid-thirties, single, by far the coolest male teacher in the school, and the sixteen boys in his homeroom were aggressively pushing him to pursue Miss Highlander.

When Mr. Mount began to make his move, so did Theo. He assumed correctly that Mr. Mount’s attention would soon be focused elsewhere; it was the perfect time for a quiet exit. Theo and three others drifted from the soccer field and were soon on their bikes racing away from the school. Their search party was much smaller, and this was by design. Yesterday’s had too many kids, with too many opinions, and too much activity that might be noticed by cops such as Officer Bard. Plus, there had been fewer volunteers during the school day as Theo and Woody got things organized. The sense of urgency that Theo felt was not shared by many of his classmates. They were concerned all right, but many of them thought that searches by kids on bikes were a waste of time. The police had SWAT teams, helicopters, dogs, and no shortage of manpower. If they couldn’t find April, the search was hopeless.

Theo, along with Woody, Aaron, and Chase, returned to the Delmont neighborhood and roamed the streets for a few minutes to make sure the police were elsewhere. With no cops in sight, they quickly began passing out MISSING flyers and tacking them to utility poles. They inspected a few empty buildings, looked behind some run-down apartments, picked their way through an overgrown drainage ditch, checked under two bridges, and were making real progress when Woody’s older brother called his cell phone. Woody froze, listened intently, then reported to the gang, “They’ve found something down by the river.”

“What?”

“Not sure, but my brother is monitoring his police scanner, said the thing has gone crazy with chatter. All cops are headed down there.”

Without hesitation, Theo said, “Let’s go.”

They sped away, out of Delmont, past Stratten College, into downtown, and as they approached the east end of Main Street, they saw police cars and dozens of officers milling about. The street was blocked; the area under the bridge was sealed off. The air was heavy with tension. And noise-two helicopters were hovering over the river. The downtown merchants and their customers stood on the sidewalks, gawking into the distance, waiting for something to happen. Traffic was being diverted away from the bridge and the river.

As the boys watched, another police car crept up beside them. The driver rolled down his window, then snarled, “What are you boys doing here?” It was Officer Bard, again.

“We’re just riding our bikes,” Theo said. “It’s not against the law.”

“Don’t get smart with me, Boone. If I see you boys anywhere near the river, I swear I’ll take you in.”

Theo thought of several quick retorts, all of which would lead to more trouble. So he gritted his teeth and politely said, “Yes, sir.”

Bard smiled smugly, then drove away, toward the bridge.

“Follow me,” Woody said as they raced off. Woody lived in a section of town called East Bluff, near the river, on a gentle rise that eventually gave way to the lowlands around the water. It was a notorious place, full of narrow streets, dark alleys, creeks, and dead-end roads. The neighborhood was generally safe, but it produced more than its share of colorful stories of strange events. Woody’s father was a noted stonemason who’d lived his entire life in East Bluff. It was a large clannish family, with lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins, all living close to each other.

Ten minutes after their encounter with Officer Bard, the boys were zipping through East Bluff, along a narrow dirt trail that zigzagged high above and beside the river. Woody was pedaling like a madman and making it difficult for the others to keep up. This was his turf; he’d been riding his bike through these trails since he was six. They crossed a gravel road, plunged down a steep hill, shot up the other side, and got serious air before landing back on the trail. Theo, Aaron, and Chase were terrified but too excited to slow down. And, of course, they were determined to keep up with Woody, who was prone to talk trash at any moment. They finally slid to a stop at a small overlook, a grassy area where the river could be seen below through some trees. “Follow me,” Woody said, and they left their bikes behind. Clutching a vine, they scampered down the side of a cliff to a rocky landing, and there, below, was the Yancey River. Their view was unobstructed.

A mile or two away, to the north, were the rows of small whitewashed houses where the river rats lived, and beyond them was the bridge, crawling with police cars. On the other side of the river, close to the bridge, an ambulance was just arriving on the scene. Policemen were in boats; several were in full scuba gear. The situation looked tense, almost frantic, as sirens wailed, policemen darted about, and the helicopters hovered low, watching everything.

Something had been found.

The boys sat on the cliff for a long time and said little. The search, or rescue, or removal, or whatever it was called, was proceeding slowly. Each of them had the same thought-that they were watching an actual crime scene in which the victim was their friend April Finnemore, and that she’d been harmed in some terrible way and left at the edge of the river. She was apparently dead, since there was no urgency in getting her out of the water and to a hospital. More police cars arrived, more chaos.

Finally, Chase said, to no one in particular, “Do you think it’s April?”

To which Woody abruptly responded, “Who else would it be? It’s not every day that a dead body floats into town.”

“You don’t know who it is or what it is,” Aaron said. He usually found some way to disagree with Woody, who had quick opinions about almost everything.

Theo’s cell phone buzzed in his pocket. He glanced at it-Mrs. Boone on her office line. “It’s my mom,” he said nervously, then answered his phone.

“Hi, Mom.”

On the other end, his mother said, “Theo, where are you?”

“Just left the soccer game,” he said, wincing at his friends. It wasn’t a complete fib, but it was also pretty far from the truth.

“Well, it appears as though the police have found a body in the river, on the other side, near the bridge,” she said. One of the helicopters, red and yellow with Channel 5 painted boldly on the sides, was obviously sending a live feed back to the station, and the entire town was probably watching.

“Has it been identified?” Theo asked.

“No, not yet. But it can’t be good news, Theo.”

“This is awful.”

“When are you coming to the office?”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Okay, Theo. Please be careful.”

The ambulance was moving away from the river, then onto the bridge, where a line of police cars formed an escort. The procession picked up speed over the river, with the helicopters trailing behind.

“Let’s go,” Theo said, and the boys slowly climbed up the cliff and left on their bikes.

Boone amp; Boone had a large law library on its first floor, near the front, close to where Elsa worked, keeping an eye on everything. The library was Theo’s favorite room in the building. He loved its rows of thick, important books, its large leather chairs, and its long mahogany conference table. It was used for all sorts of big meetings-depositions, settlement talks, and, for Mrs. Boone, pretrial preparation. She occasionally went to trial in divorce cases. Mr. Boone did not. He was a real estate lawyer who seldom left his upstairs office. He did, though, need the library from time to time to close real estate deals.

They were waiting for Theo in the library. A large flat-screen television was on with the local news, and his parents and Elsa were watching. His mother hugged him when he walked in, then Elsa hugged him, too. He took a seat near the television, his mother on one side, Elsa on the other, both patting his knees as if he had just been rescued from near death. The news report was all about the discovery of a body and its transport to the city morgue where authorities were now doing all sorts of important stuff. The reporter wasn’t sure what was happening in the morgue, and she was unable to find a witness willing to talk, so she just prattled on the way they normally do.

Theo wanted to tell everyone that he’d had a bird’s-eye view down at the river, but such a statement would make things complicated.

The reporter said the police were working with inspectors from the state crime lab and hoped to know more within a few hours.

“That poor girl,” Elsa said, and not for the first time.

“Why do you say that?” Theo asked.

“I beg your pardon.”

“You don’t know it’s a girl. You don’t know it’s April. We don’t know anything, right?”

The adults glanced at each other. Both women continued patting Theo’s knees.

“Theo’s right,” Mr. Boone said, but only to comfort his son.

They flashed a picture of Jack Leeper for the one hundredth time, and gave his background. When it became apparent there was nothing new at the moment, the story grew old. Mr. Boone drifted away. Mrs. Boone had a client waiting in the lobby. Elsa needed to answer the phone.

Theo eventually made his way to his office at the rear of the building. Judge followed, and Theo spent a lot of time rubbing his dog’s head and talking to him. It made both of them feel better. Theo put his feet on his desk and looked around his small office. He focused on the wall where his favorite sketch always made him smile. It was an elaborate pencil drawing of young Theodore Boone, Attorney, in court wearing a suit and tie, with a gavel flying by his head and the jurors roaring with laughter. The caption screamed, “Overruled!” At the bottom right-hand corner, the artist had scribbled her name, April Finnemore. The drawing had been a gift for Theo’s birthday the year before.

Was her career over before it started? Was April dead, a sweet thirteen-year-old kid brutally abducted and killed because there was no one to take care of her? Theo’s hands were shaking and his mouth was dry. He closed and locked his door, then walked to the drawing and gently touched her name. His eyes were moist, then he began crying. He dropped to the floor and cried for a long time. Judge settled in next to him, watching him sadly.