Candy from a Stranger Read online

  That’s how he thought of it: THE BELT. Not with normal letters but “THE BELT” in capital letters and he had a fierce-some respect for THE BELT because it was THE BELT that had delivered the Good One from damnation. One stroke at a time.

  Just as it had for Connie and Gabriella.

  It was hot. He’d have to get another soft drink at the next stop. That was another reason why he loved his job. How many other jobs allow you to be able to pick up a drink or a snack almost any ‘ole time you wanted to? He’d like to see Robert, Launi’s brother and his brother-in-law, try that at his job holding down the toll booth on 110. How hot does it get in one of those shoeboxes, anyway? No, he was blessed to have this job. The job let him hear the road, let him relieve himself whenever he needed to without having to announce it to the whole fidgeting world, and it let him get his drinks.

  And sometimes, it led him to the face.

  He didn’t feel the need to find the face yet, he didn’t feel the hunger; but it was coming soon. He could tell. And he could tell that the road would lead him to the right place, the right time, the right one – just as it had before.

  Yes, he is blessed. Blessed to have the job, blessed to have Launi and the two girls and blessed to be able to find the face at the proper time.

  After all, life is short. And there are so many of him.

  Chapter Four

  It took a few connections but I finally heard: “Craig.”

  There were a lot of shuffling sounds in the background so I assumed McGruff the-Crime-Dog was stapling papers and clacking away at keyboards. I said, “Sargeant Craig? I was hoping to talk with you about the young boy that’s missing? The one with the orange shoes? Sorry… ‘flip-flops’”?

  There was a swollen pause. I knew what was coming but that didn’t make it any easier. After a minute I could hear his wooden chair creak like he had reclined to put his feet up on his desk. He had. He said, “Now that I’m comfortable, let me guess: about six-feet one, 185 wearing jeans, sports coat, and those stupid kind of sneakers that are supposed to look like dress shoes. Oh… and collared-shirt. Black.”

  I guess Quik-Stop Jolene wasn’t the only one checking me out.

  I said, “I guess you saw me at the park this morning. How’d you know it would be me that called?”

  Sargeant Craig sighed. “Well, it was either going to be you or some psychic housewife whose spirit voice, Ramses IV, has been telling her where the missing boy is… and where Hoffa is, too.”

  I was at a loss for words but I said, “I’m no psychic.”

  “Let’s get off to a good start here, okay? As you can understand, I’m real busy. Would you give me your full name or is this one of those bullshit things where you’re in Witness Protection, or your outer space name is unpronounceable by humans; or the voices in your head just won’t let you tell me your name?”

  “No sir – no voices.” I gulped a drink of bourbon, certain that he could hear it over the phone. “Sir, my name is Benjamin Cain. I, uh… I think I have some information that might be pertinent to your investigation into the death of this boy, Josh Herndon.”

  There was a long silence, as if the officer was weighing his words carefully. He was. He said, “Mr. Cain? You said ‘death’ of this boy… the Herndon boy is just missing. We’ve said nothing about a death… unless there’s something you want to tell us?”

  In the background I heard swooshing sounds, the sound of arms motioning to others. Probably prompted by my choice of words.

  I hurriedly said, “The Crenshaw Motel, Sargeant Craig. My name is Ben Cain and I’m at the Crenshaw Motel, unit six. My choice of words was unfortunate but I do believe the boy is dead and if you’ll just hear me out, I…”

  He interrupted, “Mr. Cain, if you’re so forthcoming perhaps you’d like to come in and we could talk face-to-face, sort of man-to-man, you know?”

  “Sargeant Craig, I’d be happy to do that but I wanted you to have this information quickly, which is why I’m calling. I wasn’t at the park by accident. I was scanning your police band.”

  I heard him whisper, “Oh, brother…”

  Sargeant Craig said, “Okay, Mr. Cain. Now you have me guessing again. Here goes: you’re one of those lonely types who can’t get a girlfriend and you’ve got nothing to do but sit around all day listening to a scanner – which anybody with twenty bucks and a proximity to Radio Shack can get. Is that about it?”

  “No, sir. I got the scanner because I heard about the Amber Alert at my home in Austin and I figured if I drove up to Smithville I might hear… well, what I heard. About the crime scene, I mean.”

  “In Austin, hmm? Mr. Cain, if that is your real name, we haven’t designated that portion of the park as the crime scene just yet. It’s very possible that the boy was abducted elsewhere and the shoe, if it is the boy’s shoe, was placed or floated downstream to the spot we found it. Now let me ask you this: Why did an Amber Alert prompt you to leave your home in Austin to come here?”

  I swallowed more whiskey, my temperature rising. “Because I think there’s a good chance that the man who kil… kidnapped Josh Herndon also killed my son.”

  Sargeant Craig, McGruff, and all the boys tracing my call were silent for a very long time.

  Finally, “You say your son was killed. Murdered.” More of a statement than a question.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Mr. Cain of Austin, Texas… if that is a true statement there would exist a record of statements; police reports, news coverage, that sort of thing. Is that what you’re telling me?” His tone of voice was vastly different now.

  Smithville is only thirty miles north of Austin; close enough for the alert to easily extend to that college town plus Houston and Dallas, but it was very possible that residents of Smithville and their police department were unaware of what my good friend Detective Louis Perez called “my situation.” Still, that’s what computers are for.

  “Sargeant, I’m sure if you get on-line you’ll find out what I’m saying is true. I imagine you know by now that I am at the Crenshaw Motel and I am in unit six. Get a paper and pencil.”

  No doubt even fly-by-night outfits like the Smithville Police have taping devices on the phones but over the sounds of shuffling papers and murmured voices I had Sgt. Craig scratch out my Social Security number, my date-of-birth, and my full address.

  In spite of the numbing effects of the scotch, I felt that old familiar headache coming back as I said, “If all else fails, you can contact Lieutenant Louis Perez at North Division.”

  Craig was silent a long time and headache or no headache; I became jazzed and filled with anger… anger and hate.

  I said, “Sargeant Craig, don’t be like Perez and sit on your butt all day eating hot dogs. There’s a little mom-n-pop bar nearby called Dewey’s and I’m going to be there for the next couple of hours eating chicken wings and probably drinking more than what I’ve got in me now. You can find me there,” and I hung up. I hung up and stupidly stared at my cellphone like it had betrayed me when all along I knew what I was getting myself into.

  Dewey’s was walking distance even in the evening heat so I grabbed my sports coat, threw it over my shoulder as bon-vi-von as the scotch would allow me, and headed out of unit six. There were no flashing lights or squealing tires to greet me when I opened the door but Ronny, the pimply-faced kid at the motel office desk followed me with his eyes all the way out of the parking lot as I made the three-block journey to my liquid dinner.

  Dewey’s (a sign said: a fun kind of place!) was just the kind of joint that Jeanie would have liked if she had been with me instead of sitting in Ma and Pa Kettle’s house on Green Lake in Seattle. The bar was small and un-crowded and just the perfect level of darkness if you were a respectable teacher out with your wife for a couple of cocktails and you didn’t want to run into a student or be seen by a member of the faculty while you were out doing what they all did every weekend of the year. The bartender, who I nicknamed “Sloppy Joe” (because he w
as slovenly and looked like a regular “Joe”) had a Longhorns game on at low volume and his dark Little Richard pompadour at a high one.

  I was giving a chicken wing my undivided attention so I didn’t see or hear Sgt. Craig come in and was surprised when he sat down in my booth wearing regulation blues and a shiny gold badge twinkling like maybe he polished it every time he sat down to crank one out after his “Hearty-Man” dinner. I had seen him in uniform out at the park but somehow I was expecting more of a “Henry-Morgan-in-Dragnet” look when he was in night-time detective mode, rather than an Eric Estrada-on-steroids.

  Not a tall man, and definitely not a wafer-thin vegan type, Sgt. Craig was vaguely Latino-looking with a military haircut and smooth, clear skin; the kind of man who could be thirty, or forty, or… barely drinking age for all I could tell. Since he didn’t arrest himself when he came in I assumed he was over twenty-one and beyond that he could have been Estrada, or Mario Lopez… or hell, Rita Moreno in drag.

  He was unsmiling when he said, “David Craig” and extended his hand. I shook and said between bites, “Benjamin Cain. ‘David Craig’? Forgive me Sargeant, but that sounds vaguely Irish… or English. You don’t look like either.”

  He still had no smile for me. “There’s some English on my father’s side but my mom is San Antonio Mexican all the way. It helps… a lot of Habla Español only around these parts.”

  He was clutching a file folder in his left hand which he now slapped onto the table to announce that the niceties were over and it was business time… Small-town, Texas-style.

  “I spoke to your Lieutenant Louie Perez…”

  I interrupted, “He’s not my lieutenant Perez, and it’s Louis… not Louie. He hates it when you call him ‘Louie’. Which I do… all the time.”

  Already David Craig liked me about half as much as I did him.

  “As I was saying, I talked to Lieutenant Perez and he seems to feel your situation may have prompted you to, shall we say… assume too much?”

  “My ‘situation’?” I could not keep the anger out of my voice.

  “I don’t have a ‘situation’. What I have is a little boy, a dead son. I have a dead son who was killed by a sick son-of-a-bitch and ‘Louie’ Perez and the whole of the Travis County Police Department have reduced that to a ‘situation’, which means it’s now a file folder…” I slapped the folder just as he had, “…and that’s just what my son is… filed away, just another statistic.”

  If Craig looked concerned, it was only for his own ass.

  He said, “Mr. Cain, I’m sympathetic to your sit… your plight, but let me tell you what this file says…” He opened the folder.

  “You’re Benjamin Cain. You are forty-six and your wife, Jean Cain is forty-four. You had your son Lucas late in life and he is your only child. You are a teacher… or were, and until recently your wife worked part-time as a bookkeeper. You live at 1032 Bluebell Lane in north Austin and for the most part, you lead a quiet, clean life.”

  I said, “clean as in…’no arrests’?”

  “No… no convictions, but there is a dismissal of assault charges. It seems you threatened a Mr. Howard Cornwall. Principal Howard Cornwall.”

  I sneered. “I didn’t threaten him. I told Howie Corn hole that if he didn’t tighten up security on the school playground he was going to lose a lot more children.”

  Craig stirred uncomfortably. “Still, you scared him… him and a lot of other people; parents, teachers…”

  I signaled Sloppy Joe for another round and ignored the chicken wings.

  I said, “What was I supposed to do? Be a good little citizen and keep my mouth shut? Shit…mine wasn’t the only house close to that playground.”

  Sloppy was also my waitress and he brought over another scotch. I gestured at the drink, looking at Craig, but he shook his head, “No”.

  Sgt. Craig closed the file. He said, “Now let me tell you what Lieutenant Perez said that’s not in the file.”

  I shrugged and made an “oh… I can’t wait!” look.

  “He says you’re devastated, as you should be. Hell, he’s devastated…”

  I tried to interrupt this bullshit but Craig stopped me, “he is, Mr. Cain. You don’t know how it works with us cops. We have families too. Perez is devastated and frustrated and no one wants more than him… okay, okay, except you; no one wants more than him to find the man who kidnapped your son. And he is kidnapped, Mr. Cain. There has been no evidence to suggest that your son is anything but missing. Mr. Cain, I know it’s been about a year but surely you’ve seen the reports on the news about recovered children, sometimes years after the fact, who have been returned unharmed to their loved ones?”

  I wanted to spit at the word “unharmed”. As if anyone could be kept prisoner in a house for years with no outside contact and be “unharmed”.

  I said, “You seem like a plain-talker and you definitely like your facts. Admit it: my Lucas is just one of the many who’ve been abducted and will probably remain just what the others are… a number; a statistic and America would like nothing better than to have a six-pack, put its head in the sand, and file those numbers away instead of facing up to the facts.”

  “Fact”! I slammed my drink down on the table, “My son was taken by someone, I believe a man, who stalked him and waited for an unguarded moment. ‘Fact!’ his ‘Yugo’ card was not the only piece of evidence left at the scene. ‘Fact’! The police have been spinning their wheels for over a year trying to find some drifter, some hobo, some misguided relative who just happened to walk by at the ‘right’ moment. Get the picture, Sargeant?”

  Sgt. Craig sat back and eyed me coldly. So much for sympathy for my plight. He said, “Is that it? The candy wrapper? Mr. Cain, just because there was a candy wrapper at your son’s playground and there was a wrapper at today’s scene, in no way does that mean there’s a connection between the two kidnappings.”

  Jesus. What a clown. Screw this… I said, “Not a candy wrapper – Sherlock, the same candy wrapper. Keeley’s Red-Hots. Jesus, what do they teach you at crime-busting school… knitting?”

  “Mr. Cain, anyone could have left those wrappers there… anytime, any day, any week. Mr. Cain, it’s nothing.”

  My voice had been getting louder… too loud. The bartender was eyeing me nervously.

  I turned towards Sloppy Joe and said, “It’s okay, pal… I’m with a cop.”

  I slugged down a vicious amount of scotch and lowered my voice.

  “Listen,” I said, “I got lucky. I heard the Amber Alert the first day you Dudley Do-Rites put it out and I hustled my way up here. But, that means he did too and he’s probably going to move on… but not too far. He’s a predator and that means he has to find a new hunting ground but he can’t go too far in any one direction or he’ll be away from his lair… his safety zone.”

  “Is that a psychological profile, Professor?”

  I felt like I could chew glass. “That’s right, it’s Doctor. Dr. Benjamin Cain. I used to teach a class on behavioral psychology. I must not have done a very good job of it because some of the people giving you your marching orders were probably in my class.” I took a breath and leaned into his face, “I know how this man’s mind works and you should be looking for a man; white male, about thirty to thirty-five with either a residence in Austin or Smithville, or a reason to pass through both locations on a regular basis; a job, a hobby; maybe a priest, a salesman, a bus driver.”

  The warm glow of the scotch in my stomach had turned to a cold greasy fire.

  Craig said, “All that, huh? All that from a candy wrapper? Excuse me… two candy wrappers? Jesus, a priest?” Craig rubbed his temples.

  “The candy is the bait, the ice-breaker. It’s the classic ‘I’m-your-friend’.” I grimaced. “Candy from a Stranger.”

  Craig looked as wrung out as I did. I saw the look in his eyes: Please God, make this go away… make him go away.

  Sgt. David Craig, top law-dog of Shitsville, Texas was thro
ugh with me but he said, “I’m going to trust that you won’t insinuate yourself into our investigation… Doctor Cain. That would be unwise. I am very sorry that you feel the kidnapping of the Herndon boy has anything to do with your son; that your son was the first victim and the Herndon boy was the second. I assume from what you are saying, you think there’ll be a third?”

  His tone was condescending. It was all I could do to keep my voice level.

  I said, “You misunderstood me, Sargeant. I didn’t say my Lucas was the first victim. I said he was the first to be reported.”

  Sgt. Craig turned pale in spite of his Latino heritage and he silently got up, threw a slight nod at Sloppy Joe, and left Dewey’s. Dewey’s... “a fun kind of place!”

  Chapter Five

  The number of people who go missing in the United States each year is astronomical, obscene. Currently, it is estimated that there are over 800,000 people, adults and children alike, who have been missing for more than a year. Attributed to everything from domestic abuse runaways to abducted children in spousal custody disputes, the numbers are almost unfathomable. If the general public faced the statistics with the same level of belief that they give to UFO sightings, the whole nation would be in lockdown. Perhaps that’s the problem… we can’t afford a lockdown.