Frank Zafiro - Heroes Often Fail

Kendra’s eyes swelled with tears.

“What is it?”

“It wasn’t…” Kendra burst into tears. “…my fault.”

Gio nodded his understanding. “All right. I’m sure it wasn’t. What happened?”

Kendra kept crying.

“Kendra? I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what the problem is.”

Her small sobbing continued.

Gio waited a few seconds, then rose slowly. He sat on the bed and leaned forward, catching Kendra’s eye. “I’m here to help, Kendra. But I need your help.”

Her sobs lessened. She wiped away tears.

“Can you help me?” Gio asked. “Can you tell me what has you so upset?”

Kendra looked him straight in the eye.

“They took her away.”

0912 hours

The telephone rang and Lieutenant Alan Hart pounced on it like it was a cop who’d spent too long on a coffee break.

“Lieutenant Hart,” he intoned with what he believed was the most efficient blend of authority and professionalism.

“Lieutenant, it’s Officer Giovanni.”

Hart said nothing.

Gio continued. “I’m, uh, calling because I think we might have a situation here.”

“A situation?”

“Yeah. I’m talking to a little girl on a call and she-“

“Officer Giovanni.”

“Yeah?”

“Why aren’t you having this conversation with Sergeant Kiel?”

“Sorry?”

“It’s a plain enough question. Why aren’t you discussing field operations with a field sergeant?”

“Uh…because there aren’t any.”

“What?”

“Sergeant Kiel called in sick. He was the only one scheduled to work today.”

Hart pursed his lips and swore silently. Usually, he went to day shift roll call and made sure things ran smoothly. But he was facing an equipment audit at the end of the quarter and had elected to skip roll call and work on his paperwork.

“Who is in charge out there?”

“Corporal McGee,” Gio said.

A corporal? Hart sighed. That was tantamount to letting the inmates run the asylum for a shift.

“I figured McGee would just be kicking this upstairs to you, anyway, so I called you first,” Gio explained.

He was probably right, Hart knew, but he didn’t want to let Giovanni off so easily.

“The chain of command isn’t there for you to pick and choose, officer,” he lectured. “You should have called your corporal first.”

“You want me to hang up and do that?”

Hart tried to detect sarcasm in Giovanni’s voice, but found it was too difficult over the telephone. “No, it’s too late for that now. Go ahead and brief me.”

“All right. Lieutenant, I think we might have a kidnapped girl on our hands.”

“Kidnapped?”

“Sounds like it could be, yeah.”

“Are you sure she’s not just a runaway?”

“Pretty sure,” Gio said.

“What makes you so sure?”

“The witness who says a guy in a van grabbed her up.” This time the sarcasm in his voice was apparent.

“Officer, I don’t have time for word games,” Hart snapped. “Tell me what you have.”

“I’m talking with Kendra Ferguson, a six year old girl. She’s saying that when she and her friend Amy Dugger were coming home, a van pulled up next to them and a man with a ski mask got out of it. He grabbed Amy and took her.”

“But not this…Ferguson girl?”

“She ran.”

“She outran a full-grown man?”

“My guess is he gave up when she took off.”

“Your guess? Officer, this sounds like a fantastic story, doesn’t it?”

“I think she’s telling the truth.”

Hart smiled to himself. Police officers were all so sure that they were human lie detectors. “Have you contacted the other girl’s family?”

“Not yet. No one is answering the phone.”

Hart considered. On the one hand, a major event like a kidnapping was an excellent opportunity for him to showcase his skills that he’d recently learned at an Incident Command school. But invoking I.C. was a large, not to mention expensive, move. He didn’t really want to risk making it for what could be a runaway, or worse yet, a little girl playing hide and seek. He’d look foolish if he initiated a major incident and the child was found asleep under a comforter in her sibling’s bedroom or something.

No, he decided, he needed to be methodical. He would escalate the investigation slowly and by the book. That would show the Patrol Captain and the Chief of Police that he was capable of striking a balance between the perceived needs of the public and being a steward of department resources.

“Lieutenant?” Gio asked, prompting him.

Hart shook himself from his contemplation. “Officer,” he said in the careful voice he reserved for giving instructions to line officers, “this is what I want you to do.”

0916 hours

Gio hung up the phone, shaking his head. Hart was an idiot.

“What’s wrong?” Jill Ferguson asked him. She’d brewed a small pot of coffee and now sat at the kitchen table, watching him. A second cup was on the table in front of an empty kitchen chair.

Gio shook his head. “Boss problems.”

Jill nodded and studied his face.

He picked up the cup of coffee she’d made, thanked her and took a drink. His mind was whirring. Hart had ordered him to search the Ferguson house and to find Kathy Dugger, as well as searching the school and the neighborhood. He’d graciously offered to call radio and have another officer dispatched to assist him. Once they’d accomplished that, he wanted Gio to call him back. Then he’d decide if they had a kidnapping or not.

“You look troubled,” Jill said. Her coffee cup sat untouched in front of her.

Gio shrugged. “My lieutenant isn’t so sure Kendra’s account is…accurate.”

“He thinks she’s lying?”

Gio struggled with defending Hart, who he knew was wrong. But professionalism demanded it. “Not lying. Just…six, I guess.”

Jill pursed her lips. “Kendra has an active imagination,” she admitted, “but you called Kathy, right?”

Gio nodded his agreement. “No answer there yet.” He suppressed a sigh. “It’s just procedure. Another officer will help me out and we’ll just make sure Kendra isn’t mistaken.”

“What if she’s right, though?” Jill asked. “What if, while you’re wasting time checking out her story, she really was taken?”

Gio didn’t have an answer for her. His hands were tied.

“Because if that’s the case,” Jill said, “then her kidnappers are getting further and further away.”

0922 hours

Officer Jack Stone arrived at the Ferguson residence. Gio walked out to meet him and filled him in at the door of Stone’s patrol car.

“I suppose she could be making it up,” Stone said with a shrug. “She is only six. What do you think?”

“I think Hart is an idiot,” Gio said.

Stone shrugged again. That sentiment was considered a given on the day tour.

Gio shook his head in frustration. “But I’ve got to jump through his hoops.”

Stone gave a third shrug and tapped the steering wheel absently. “What do you want me to do?”

Gio sighed. “Would you cruise around the neighborhood and look for Amy? Check the school playground, places like that.”

“Got it. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to get a good statement from our only witness so that when Hart gets off his ass and decides this really is a kidnapping, we’ll have something to go on.”

“Okay,” Stone said. “Hell of a day for the Sarge to get sick, huh?”

“You got that right.”

Gio tapped the top of Stone’s patrol car and stepped back. Stone drove away. Gio watched him go, then turned and trudged back up to the Ferguson’s front door.