John Gilstrap - Nathan’s Run

Hackner shook his head. “Don’t know for sure yet, but I don’t think so. If we believe Bailey’s story on the radio, could be that Harris was just trying to be nasty. I’m meeting with Johnstone this afternoon to find out what I can.”

Michaels motioned with a nod. “Go ahead. Start the tape again.”

The boy’s body became whole again, and he darted straight for the camera, looking over alternating shoulders with every step. He moved like a dog encountering a shadow in the night, not sure whether to stand and fight or to run away. The boy on the screen was visibly startled when he noticed the camera. He turned completely around, presumably checking to see who would be following him.

When Nathan turned back to the camera, Michaels’s heart stopped beating for just the briefest of moments. The expression in Nathan’s eyes was one he had seen before.

“Stop the tape!”

The command was louder this time. The body was cut in half again, more severely this time, but the face and eyes were untouched by the interference. Nathan’s eyes spoke of fear and uncertainty, the wrinkled brow showing greater age than the smooth features should allow. Beyond the blood and the fear was the face of a young boy begging for help.

Michaels had seen that very expression dozens of times from the face of another insecure, introverted twelve-year-old who’d once depended upon him for so much, but now was silent forever. An image flashed though his mind of that other boy’s face—now expressionless—reclining against a satin pillow, looking so uncomfortable in an ill-fitting suit, a ridiculous gap around the shirt collar. So confined in a narrow box.

Michaels felt suddenly light-headed, and lowered himself clumsily into a chair at the conference table. His face was drained of color.

Hackner reached out to help his friend into the chair. “My God, Warren, are you all right?”

Michaels thought he shook his head, but in reality didn’t move. “I don’t know, jed.” His eyes never left the screen. His throat was thick. “Look at his face, Jed. Look. He’s got Brian’s eyes.”

Jed saw it, too. The likeness was remarkable, though not so much in the eyes as in the expression. He felt awful for not catching it during his previous viewings of the tape. He could have warned Warren up front, or even avoided that portion of the tape. Jed felt genuine pain for him.

“I’m so sorry, Warren,” Hackner said. “I’ll turn it off.”

“No, don’t:’ Michaels said firmly, having regained his composure before ever really losing it. “Jesus, Jed, I thought I was past it. I can’t keep reacting like that. I’m okay. Let’s watch the rest of it.”

Jed kept a careful eye on his boss as he restarted the tape. Once again, the electronic image melded together, just long enough for the boy to slip quickly out of the frame. There was a quick editing blip on the screen, and then they were looking at the exterior of the exit. In the foreground were a portion of the driveway and a short sidewalk. In the background was a door, which opened slowly to reveal the hero of this little television drama as he slipped out of the door, relocked it, and then sprinted out of the picture. One more blip, and the screen was blank.

Neither man said anything for a long moment while Hackner thumbed the power button and killed the television. “Well, boss, what do you think?”

Michaels sighed loudly, rubbing his face with both hands. “I think I wish I hadn’t watched it. That tape’s going to make my job a lot harder. Does the press have it yet?”

“What, are you kidding? Petrelli’s hounds were all over that tape like flies on dog shit. He’s got a movie of a blood-soaked murderer. My guess is they had it to the news stations even before we had copies made.”

Michaels chuckled softly. “I don’t know about you, Jed, but what I saw looked less like a murderer than a frightened puppy.” He could just imagine the look on Petrelli’s face the first time he viewed the tape and realized that his minions had already turned it over to the press. It wasn’t going to be pretty, but Warren would have paid a hundred dollars just to be there.

“J. Daniel’s going to shit pickles.”

With the briefest movement of his head, Michaels returned to the business at hand: catching the whipped puppy who was making Petrelli sweat so much. Rising abruptly out of his chair, he led the two-person parade back toward his office. “One thing I want you to check up on, Jed, is the telephone records to that radio show. Every time a call is made to an 800 number it’s got to be logged into a computer somewhere. I want you to tap into that computer and find out the number where that call originated. We’ll trace it and get the kid back home.”

Hackner moaned. He had done similar searches before, most recently for a fraud case, only to be inundated with hundreds of telephone numbers, each of which had to be checked. The case he recalled was an investigation of a small consulting business, and that investigation had taken a week to complete. The Bitch had a nationwide audience, attracting probably a thousand calls an hour. There weren’t enough police officers in the world to complete that kind of investigation in anything close to a reasonable time.

“We’ll need a court order,” Jed stalled. “We won’t stand a chance against a radio station.”

“Get them to volunteer the information,” Warren suggested without breaking his stride. “Be persuasive. You know, invaluable service to their community, that sort of thing.”

“They’ll never buy it, Warren.”

Michaels stopped abruptly. Jed missed a collision by inches. “Look, Jed, we’ve got a job to do, and so far we haven’t been doing it. We don’t have a clue where this kid went, so don’t tell me what we can’t do until we’ve at least tried, okay? You were at the meeting this morning, and I think I was pretty clear. I want Nathan Bailey in custody tonight. Understand?”

Jed sensed that the others in the squad room were desperately trying not to hear. He turned and left without saying a word.

Five minutes later, Michaels left as well, telling his secretary that he could be reached on his cellular phone.

Over the last five years, Denise Carpenter had interviewed hundreds of guests, ranging from the famous to the infamous, but never had she received such a response as the one generated by her conversation with Nathan. Her plans to discuss the president’s foreign policy would have to wait for another day. The lines were so jammed that other 800 numbers with the same three-digit exchange were unable to receive calls, creating a nightmare of enormous proportions for the phone company.

On the other side of the glass, Enrique was struggling to manage the tidal wave of calls, coaxing those who’d been on hold for over an hour to hang in there while screening the few additional callers who’d been able to get through. For Enrique, the universe of callers fell neatly into only two categories: sincere and crackpot. His job was to make sure that the only people who got to talk on the air with Denise were stating their legitimate beliefs, and were able to remain topical. This was not the time to discuss the moral aspects of capital punishment, as Maureen from Seattle had wanted; nor was it the time to discuss the weaknesses of the foster care system in Des Moines, as Charlie had wanted to do. In practice, it was impossible to keep callers on the topic once they started talking, but that was okay, so long as they started out on the right track.

Then there were the sickos. Like William from Bakersfield, who wanted to point out the most efficient ways to kill with a knife, or Paula from Bangor, Maine, who wanted to see Nathan hoisted slowly by a noose so that he could suffer the way he had made Ricky suffer.