Brad Parks - Eyes of the Innocent

Sadly, the computer sitting on my desk was roughly as old as the ashtray. No one knew the exact age of our terminals: they already qualified as antique when I started at the paper; by now, the only way anyone could figure out how long they had been there was through carbon dating. We were assured they would be replaced just as soon as advertising revenues rebounded. In other words, we had a long wait.

As my machine clicked and rattled to life, I began playing around with various Windy Byers theories, seeing if I could find one that fit. The police chief said they thought it was “politically motivated,” but I was having a hard time digesting that one. Byers was a hack who had been in the game long enough that he knew how to play by the rules and avoid pissing off important people. He had no policy initiatives that could have engendered anyone’s ire. It wasn’t like he had unpopular or dangerous ideas inasmuch as I’m not sure he had ideas, period.

I could much more easily believe this was the result of some romantic entanglement. But if the spilled blood was to be believed, Byers’s disappearance was not a peaceful one-which ruled out the run-off-with-the-girlfriend/boyfriend scenario.

Then again, there was nothing yet to say the blood belonged to Byers. For all we knew at this point, it had another owner. Perhaps Byers was not the kidnapped but the kidnapper, having belted someone over the head, dragged his victim out of the house, and gone on the lam until he could concoct a cover story.

In other words, the blindfold and oven mitts were firmly in place. So I did what any good reporter does when facing such uncertainty: I procrastinated by checking my e-mail.

It was, by and large, the usual mix of urgent messages from our hyperactive HR department (send in your vacation pictures for the company newsletter!); press releases I would never read (the office of a congressman from New Orleans sent me three or four a day because I once wrote a story that contained the word “Louisiana”); and come-ons from that seemingly massive group of African princes who needed but a small loan to claim their long-lost fortunes (doesn’t it always take $50,000 to become a multimillionaire?).

I nearly turned away without reading any of them. Except there was one message, which claimed to be sent by “Concerned Citizen,” that stood out. It had the subject line “keep digging.” Curious, I clicked twice and read:

ms. mcmillan and mr. ross,

i saw your story today in the eagle-examiner on that woman with the two kids. theres a reason you couldnt find the mortgage. there are things going on at the courthouse which if i told you you wouldnt believe. keep digging and youll find it.

im sorry i cant give you my name. but i could get fired for talking to you and i have kids to feed and i need this job.

signed,

a concerned citizen.

I leaned back and reread it. As a reporter, you get anonymous mail all the time. Much of it is nonsensical, rambling, Unabomber-style stuff good for a laugh-and not much else. But every now and then you get something like this that sticks to your ribs. You learn to separate the credible from the crazies, primarily by judging grammar and spelling. Other than the aversion to apostrophes and the e. e. cummings approach to capitalization, this one wasn’t bad.

Mostly, it brought back the things that had been gnawing at me since Sweet Thang first called me from the courthouse. Where was that silly mortgage? Who made it disappear? And, perhaps most important, why?

* * *

I lifted my eyes from the screen and realized I had allowed myself to get a little too engrossed, which meant I didn’t notice Sal Szanto huffing toward me. And now it was too late: 245 pounds of pear-shaped, middle-aged Italian-American editor was already standing over me, close enough I could smell the stale coffee on his breath. So much for being able to see the enemy coming.

Szanto was one of those editors who didn’t believe in leaving his office, except in cases of emergency or lunch. As it was now past lunchtime, it could only mean he was in crisis.

“Did you get it?” he asked, without prelude, with an urgency that just made it impossible not to mess with him a little.

“Hi, Sal, nice to see you,” I said. “There’s something different about you. Did you switch antacid brands?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m wearing a different deodorant, too. It’s called Garbage Guard. They tell me it works great, so why don’t you cut the garbage and tell me whether you got the bracelet or not.”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“Did you give it to her?”

“Not yet.”

“Why the hell not?” he demanded.

“Here,” I said, fishing the bracelet out of my pocket and dangling it in front of him. “Why don’t you give it to her? Go ahead. Be the hero.”

Szanto turned to look in the direction of the intern desk pod, a place from which Sweet Thang was, of course, still absent.

“Where is she?”

“I think you’re beginning to realize why I haven’t given it to her yet,” I said.

Szanto swung back toward me, annoyed, what little patience he had long since spent. I don’t know what it was, but the more frustrated he got, the more I enjoyed screwing with him.

“Do you know where she is?”

“I assume she’s off somewhere looking for her bracelet.”

“Did you call her cell?”

“No, Sal, I sent smoke signals which were then relayed by drummer-messengers perched on a series of hilltops,” I said. “It’s the newest, most sophisticated method of communication yet devised. I don’t think humankind will ever come up with anything better.”

Szanto drew breath as if he was going to let me have it, then stopped himself.

“Look,” he said, sinking into a chair next to me, releasing a huge cloud of java-tinged exhaust. “I just need you to help me out here. You know how fixated Brodie gets about certain things, right?”

“I do.”

“He’s like one of those little dogs, the little white ones with the black splotches that want to hump your leg all day long,” Szanto said. “What do you call those?”

“Jack Russell terrier?”

“Exactly. He’s a Jack Russell terrier. And right now, I’m just a lonely ankle, and I’ve had this dog’s tiny little schlong banging into me all day-bang, bang, bang, bang. I mean, can you imagine what kind of day that is?”

“Don’t even want to.”

“No, really, you don’t. Trust me,” Szanto said. “Anyhow, the whole reason Brodie is giving me this undue attention is this bracelet. Apparently, Sweet Thang called her daddy crying, and her daddy called Brodie and asked for a favor, and with everything else going on, Brodie still thinks I have nothing better to do than to make sure he can do a favor for his buddy. So if you could please, please just get this girl her bracelet back, and tell her to call her daddy, who can then call Brodie, you’d really be doing me a favor.”

“Okay, I’ll do it just as soon as she walks in the door,” I assured him, then turned my attention toward my computer screen, which is International Body Language for “we’re done with this conversation and now you can go away.”

Except Szanto was acting like he didn’t understand it.

“Not soon enough,” he said.

“Huh?” I said, still keeping my head down.

“You got to go find her.”

“Excuse me?” I said, and looked up at him, trying to effect my best vacant stare, as if I didn’t know who he was or what he was talking about.

“Find her. Find Sweet Thang and give her that bracelet.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

He didn’t reply, just grinned-one of his four smiles for the year, so he must have been serious.

“You’re not kidding me.”