Marcia Talley - Through the Darkness

Dante was there, indeed, sitting between Emily and a pudgy, white-haired guy in a gray suit. A plainclothes policewoman stood at the head of the table, and seemed in charge of the proceedings.

“Sorry to interrupt.” I felt my face grow hot as I lurched toward the vacant chair next to my husband. “I’m Hannah Ives,” I began, before realizing that the woman I was addressing needed no introduction to me.

FBI Special Agent Amanda Crisp of the Annapolis Regional Authority hadn’t changed much since early last year, when I’d come so close to eluding her at the Ballston Metro station. Her honey-blond hair had grown out, and she’d gathered it neatly into a bunlike coil at the nape of her neck, but otherwise I would have recognized her anywhere. Same dark gray pantsuit and crisp white shirt. Same telltale bulge under her jacket. Same highly polished shoes. Besides, you tend not to forget people who roust you out of bed at five-thirty in the morning and haul your ass off to jail.

I grabbed the back of my chair for support. “Agent Crisp! Quite frankly, the last time we were together, I hoped it would be the last. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“I hope you’ll believe me when I tell you how very glad I am to see you,” I added. “In spite of all the unpleasantness last year, I have a very high level of confidence in the FBI.”

“Thank you.”

Was it my imagination, or was there a hint of a smile? Just as quickly as it came, the smile vanished. “Chief Sheldon has asked us to coordinate the investigation into Timmy’s disappearance.”

“So soon? We’re so grateful.” I was thinking that Chief Sheldon probably had precious little to do with it. Lieutenant Dennis Rutherford had friends in high places, and his fingerprints were all over Crisp’s current assignment.

The white-haired guy in the gray suit stirred. “Special Agent Norm Brown here, Mrs. Ives. Normally we wait at least forty-eight hours before we get involved in a kidnapping, but we’re working under the assumption that Timmy might already have been taken across state lines.”

How well I knew. It was one of the thoughts that had kept me tossing and turning the previous night. Annapolis is only thirty minutes from Washington, thirty-five from Virginia, an hour from Delaware, and an hour and a half, max, from the West Virginia, Pennsylvania, or New Jersey state lines. It had been twenty-four hours since we’d last seen our baby. He could be virtually anywhere.

“Has there been any ransom demand?” I asked as Paul helped me into a chair, a worried frown creasing his brow.

“Not yet. But we’ve put a tap on the switchboard here at the spa, and on the telephone at the Shemansky home.”

Emily had been slouched in her chair, staring at her thumbs, but she raised her head fractionally to ask, “Shouldn’t there have been a ransom demand by now?”

“Children are taken for many reasons, Mrs. Shemansky. We’re trying to take all those possibilities into account.”

I watch television, I read the newspapers. I knew what some of those possibilities were, and it made my stomach clench.

“Who could do this?” Emily wailed, rocking back and forth in her chair. “Who? Who? Who?”

“We don’t know, but as we gather the evidence, we’ll be turning it over to a behaviorist from the Behavioral Sciences Unit at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. He’ll sort it out and give us his evaluation.”

“Behavorist?” Dante snorted. “You mean one of those profilers? One of those mental giants who announced that the D.C. sniper was a local boy, an angry white man, working alone? So it turns out we have two black guys from Washington State. That was taxpayer money well spent.”

Emily bowed her head and began to sob quietly.

Trying to turn the discussion in a more promising direction, I said, “When I drove up, the K-9 unit had just arrived. What can you tell us about that?”

Crisp’s face brightened. “Good. I imagine they’ll be running the dog shortly.” She tipped her head toward her colleague. “Agent Brown, would you locate the handler? Ask him to check in with me?”

Agent Brown scooted his chair back and stood up. “Right.” He strode out of the conference room, hitching up his pants by the belt, and I realized that in spite of the abundant white hair, he couldn’t have been more than forty.

“Will they be using bloodhounds?” Connie asked after the door closed behind Brown. “I understand bloodhounds are the best for tracking on the ground.” I wondered if Connie had fessed up to being the wife of a cop, or whether she had identified herself simply as great-aunt to the victim.

“We’ve brought the best.”

“May we watch?” Connie wanted to know.

“I don’t want to watch,” Emily whimpered. “I just want my little boy back.”

“If you stay outside the perimeter tape,” Agent Crisp said, focusing on Connie, “it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Dante turned to me. “Before you showed up, Hannah, Agent Crisp was telling us that she’s heading the crisis negotiation team the FBI has assigned to our case. They’re setting up a command center at our house.”

Emily’s eyes grew wide with panic. “But, we’re all here! What if the kidnapper calls the house and there’s nobody there to answer the phone?”

“We have an agent at the house, Mrs. Shemansky,” Crisp said, “and we’ve already patched the phones through. If the phone rings at the house, it rings here.” She indicated the telephone sitting silently and ominously on the credenza.

Paul swiveled in his chair to face me. “We’ve called our first press conference for two o’clock this afternoon.”

“At Dante and Emily’s?” I asked.

“That’s right.” He paused. “Hannah? Are you all right? Your face is red as a beet.”

I put a hand to my cheek. It was burning with fever. But if I were coming down with something, I didn’t want to know about it.

“I’m fine, Paul,” I lied, dismissing his concerns. I forced a smile. “That’s a good plan,” I pointed out. “The children will still be in school.”

“We thought that, too.”

I knew from previous, sad experience that by meeting with the press at two, we might assure a spot on the early editions of the evening news. And by setting a time, we might limit the size of the press corps camping out on Emily’s lawn at other times of the day.

Thinking of the rabid horde of reporters already clustered at the gates of the spa, and of all the April weekends Paul had helped Dante fertilize and seed his yard, I said, dumbly, “They’ll ruin the lawn.”

Dante grimaced. “Fuck the lawn.”

We were saved from further comment by the arrival of a red and tan bloodhound about the height of a coffee table. Yoda, as she was called, was blessed with muscular shoulders and a deep chest. At 135, I probably outweighed the dog by only five or ten pounds. Yoda’s eyes were set deeply into her oversized head; her floppy ears, wrinkled face, and drooling, drooping lips gave her a morning-after look. Yoda looked like I felt.

Hung over.

Yoda was followed into the room by her handler, a young officer introduced to us by Agent Brown as Barbara Helm. Carrying Yoda’s leash loosely in her hands, Officer Helm explained that Yoda was a man-tracking dog. She’d be taken to the nursery where she’d be given Timmy’s scent, and then we’d see where she took us.

“I don’t want to get your hopes up,” Helm added, smiling at Yoda with obvious pride, “but this bloodhound has proven herself able to track the faint scent of the victim coming out through a car’s ventilating system.”

“How is that possible?” Connie asked, genuine amazement in her voice.

Officer Helm laid Yoda’s leash across the arm of a nearby chair. “Since 1978, all American cars are required to circulate the inside air while the motor is running to protect people from getting carbon monoxide poisoning.”