Max Collins - Stolen Away

Lindbergh set his section down. “Put it together, would you, men?”

“Good God,” I said. “That thing’s a mess, isn’t it?”

“It’s ingenious in its way,” Lindbergh said. “Slopped together as it is, inexpert as the carpentry may be, it was designed so that each section fits inside another. One man could carry it, though it’s been kept separate like this, for examination.”

The troopers were inserting wooden dowels to connect the sections. The top rung of the bottom section had broken, apparently under a man’s weight.

I walked over and pointed to the broken pieces. “One of the kidnappers did that?”

Lindbergh nodded. “And I may have heard the bastard climbing either up or down. I heard what sounded like the slats of an orange crate breaking, around nine o’clock.”

“Were you in the study?”

“No-the living room, with Anne.”

“Did you check on the sounds?”

“No,” he said glumly. “I just said, ‘What was that?’ to Anne, and she said, ‘What was what?’ and we both went back to our reading. Shortly after that, she went upstairs to bed and I went into the study.”

So Lindbergh was probably in the study at least part of the time the kidnapping was taking place.

“Place that in the holes, would you?” he said to the troopers.

It took both of them to maneuver the clumsy, towering affair. They placed it carefully in the indentations in the ground and placed it against the side of the house, where it rose several feet above, and to the right of, the nursery window, stretching damn near to the roof.

“Well, it’s way off,” I said, craning my neck back. “Obviously.”

“I just wanted you to see that,” he said. “We figure the kidnappers miscalculated on the ladder.”

“They sure as hell didn’t have a carpenter on their team,” I said. “So, what? They must have just used the lower two sections.”

Lindbergh nodded. “The ladder was found over there…” He pointed about sixty feet to the southeast. “…with the two bottom sections connected.” Then he directed the troopers to haul the ladder down, remove the dowel and lift off the top section, and put the now two-sectioned ladder back up.

“It’s still way off,” I said.

Now the ladder was about three feet below the nursery window. And, again, to the right. You could see the places on the whitewashed fieldstone where the ladder had scraped; no doubt about it: only two sections of the ladder were used, and this was where it rested.

“Well, what do you make of it, then?” Lindbergh asked.

“I’m revising my opinion about this not necessarily being an inside job.”

Lindbergh’s frown was barely discernible, but it was there. “Why, Mr. Heller?”

“Somebody had to have handed your baby out to an accomplice on the ladder. That’s about the only way it figures…unless two people went up the ladder, one at a time. I doubt that thing would support two people at once.”

“Perhaps that’s why it broke,” he suggested.

“The weight of the child, added to whoever carried him down, probably did that.”

“Good God. If Charlie fell…”

I lifted a hand. “From that height, there’d have been the impression of whoever fell-and it would’ve probably been both of ’em, the child and the kidnapper. If…excuse me, Colonel…if the kidnapper dropped the child, but managed to retain his own footing on the ladder, there still would’ve been an impression in that wet ground.”

Which even the New Jersey cops couldn’t have missed.

“Perhaps a woman went up first,” Lindbergh said, studying it, hand on his chin. “We know a woman was standing around out here…”

“A woman’s touch might explain the baby staying quiet. I mean, the baby didn’t wake up crying, or someone would’ve heard him, I would imagine.”

“Yes. My wife was in the next room, separated only by a bath.” Impulsively, grabbing my arm, he said, “Come. Look the nursery over.”

We went up the uncarpeted stairs, and the upstairs was as clean, fresh-smelling and impersonal as below.

Lindbergh hesitated outside the nursery, and I went on in. He stayed in the doorway and watched me look around.

It was the warmest-looking room I’d seen here-and the most lived-in. Evergreen trees, a country church, and a man with a dog were gaily pictured on the light green wallpaper; between the two east windows was a fireplace with a mosaic of a fisherman, windmill, elephant and little boy with a hoop; on the mantel was an ornamental clock around which were gathered a porcelain rooster and two smaller porcelain birds. A kiddie car was parked near the hearth. Against the opposite wall was the child’s four-poster-style maple crib; nearby was a pink-and-green screen, on which farmyard animals frolicked.

“That’s where he takes his meals,” Lindbergh said from the doorway, pointing to a small maple table in the middle of the room. Specks of dried-up food still remained.

I was looking in the crib. “Are these the baby’s bedclothes?”

“Yes. Exactly as they were.”

The bedclothes-blankets and sheets-were barely disturbed; they were attached to the mattress with a pair of large safety pins. The impression of the child’s head was still on the damn pillow.

“Whoever did this lifted the child out without waking him,” I said. “Or, if the boy did wake, he wasn’t startled. A familiar face, a familiar touch?”

“Or,” Lindbergh said, almost defensively, “a woman’s touch. Perhaps a woman did go up the ladder first…”

“I’d buy that sooner,” I said, “if the rungs weren’t so damn far apart.”

I walked to the southeast window, the kidnappers’ window. It was recessed, window-seat deep. Below it, against the wall, was a low cedar chest. It was almost as wide as the wide sill itself. On top of the cedar chest was a black suitcase, on which sat a jointed wooden bunny on a small string.

“That chest houses Charlie’s personal fortune,” Lindbergh said, trying to sound cheerful. “His toys. He has plenty, I’m afraid.”

I smiled over my shoulder at him. “And when you get him back, you’re going to buy him another damn chestful, aren’t you?”

Lindbergh smiled shyly. “I intend to spoil Charlie rotten.”

“Good for you,” I said, kneeling at the chest. “Was this chest moved away from the window at all? Disturbed in any way?”

“No.”

“How about this suitcase?”

“No.”

“Any mud, any scuffs, on the suitcase, or the chest?”

“No.”

“Where was this toy rabbit found?”

“Right where you see it. Right where it usually was.”

I stood. “The house wall is a foot and a half thick, and the sill is almost as wide. Anybody entering through that window would have to span a distance of almost three feet to actually get in this room proper. Doing that without leaving mud, without moving the chest, without disturbing the suitcase or toy rabbit, and all without making a ruckus…very improbable.”

Lindbergh said nothing.

I opened the window and felt the rush of cold air. The shutters wouldn’t close. “Are the shutters on any of the other windows warped like this?”

“No.”

“They must have known about this,” I said, trying unsuccessfully to shut them.

“A chisel was found outside,” Lindbergh said, “which would indicate they thought they’d have to break in. They just got lucky, picking this window.”

“I don’t know what the chisel was for, other than maybe to make somebody assume what you just assumed. This window wasn’t pried open, was it?”

“No. It wasn’t locked; we lock the shutters, not the windows.”

“But this window is directly over the curtainless window of your study below. The French windows, on the other side of the room, over a side door, are what a kidnapper who didn’t know about the broken shutter would’ve come in through.”