Randy White - Dead Silence

The police were convinced. One of the cops had trouble hiding a smile. I, too, was convinced, but for a different reason. Archibald Heffner, a polished attorney, wouldn’t have yelled at a backhoe driver because he feared a small fine. Not in front of police anyway.

Heffner was scared. Why did he fear a more careful search?

The cops threatened to arrest me when I refused to leave.

I said, “Then arrest me.” I wasn’t moving until I had spoken with Barbara and with the FBI.

“I’m getting a court order to open these graves,” I told the cops. “I’m probably wrong, but what if I’m right? Why not play it safe? Scramble an emergency crew. What if it was your kid?”

I told them we need bottled oxygen to aerate the pipes. And at least one GPR on wheels. GPR-Ground Penetrating Radar. If local Search and Rescue didn’t have a unit, I suggested the nearest university with an archaeology department might.

The cops told me that even though procedure required that Tomlinson and I be handcuffed, they would wait to hear from their duty officer.

They were reasonable men. Most cops are. Tomlinson is not. As they approached, he sat down fast, arms folded, and advised me, “When the pigs try to lift you, let your body go limp. They hate that. But watch your nuts.”

My first sit-in and my last.

Passive resistance is effective if you have unlimited time.

We didn’t.

It was early Saturday morning, and Barbara’s staff spent an hour working contacts before they’d assembled enough New York muscle to roust a judge willing to sign a search warrant. It took me slightly longer to locate a GPR machine and get a technician on-scene.

Heffner battled us every step.

Somehow, though, I’d won over the cops. They had an EMS vehicle beside the graves within fifteen minutes. They pretended not to notice when we started opening a hole around the pipe, digging with our hands.

At 12:35 p.m. we got the go-ahead to use the backhoe but were specifically limited to the two freshest graves. Same with the little GPR, which was mounted on wheels like a lawn mower.

By then, though, I suspected there was no reason to dig. Heffner didn’t realize it but he had convinced me of that, too.

Saturday morning, 10:30 a.m., I was outside the Nelson A. Myles family mansion, deciding the best way to break into the place, when I received text messages from Barbara, then Harrington. A third text arrived seconds later. It was from James Montbard.

Across the road from the Myles estate was a wooded ridge. Bare oaks and dune grass. I sat with my back against one of the trees and opened Barbara’s message. New photo: William in coffin before burial. Air runs out 8 a.m. tomorrow. Horrible. Do something!

The news could have been worse. I remembered the meeting at the hotel, the agent saying it’s what we should expect if the kidnappers weren’t bluffing. A “trophy shot,” he had called it. Their way of proving they meant what they said. Will Chaser might still be alive if the shot had been taken that morning.

I downloaded the attached photo and watched the Indian kid’s face appear as an incremental scroll of pixels cascading down my screen. Messaging was the only way I could be contacted. My phone was muted, and I had been ignoring calls for an hour. The explanation was simple: I was tired of apologizing.

The search of the Tomlinson estate had produced nothing but embarrassment for a certain U.S. senator. Same with partially exhuming two dead horses while a sleepy GPR technician, two attorneys, an FBI agent and a half dozen cops and EMTs watched. What we found-or didn’t find-in the graves doused whatever interest the FBI had in stretching the connection.

Magazines inside the Tomlinson mansion suggested someone was following the Castro story? Big deal.

Barbara was not happy. She had strong-armed her New York congressional colleagues to provide everything I wanted for what? Nothing. Just like Archibald Heffner had said, there was no evidence that young Will Chaser had been in the area. Call in the cavalry twice in one night, there’d better be a good reason.

Now Barbara was ready to pull the plug on Marion D. Ford-our professional relationship anyway, which included the entire relationship I was beginning to believe. I could hear it in her tone and read it between the lines of her text message.

Do something!

I was trying.

On my phone, the boy’s face was being assembled line by line. I noticed there was dirt in his hair. Then I watched Will’s eyes appear, staring into the camera. Dark eyes but bright, as if sparks provided backlight. His expression was complex, a mix of fear and something else. Anger? No. More intense. Rage-that was it. Rage focused on a precise cynosure of loathing. It was laser-like, aimed straight at the photographer. It pierced the lens.

I realized I was smiling. The kid had grit. Still battling despite insane odds.

Insane, the right word.

The boy was in a box, looking up from a pit that might have been freshly dug. Dirt in his hair was suggestive. The angle gave the impression the hole was four or five feet deep. It was only a head-and-shoulders shot but enough to tell the story.

Will’s mouth was duct-taped. A tube ran from the tape to a bottle of water, only partly visible. PCV pipe, attached to wires, had been propped next to the boy’s head, along with a heavily taped battery pack. The kidnappers wanted us to see part of the fan assembly that provided air-their way of saying the boy’s life was now in our hands. If we delivered before deadline, we had a chance.

I glanced at my watch. Twenty-one hours, but the kidnappers had put responsibility for the boy’s life in our hands.

Shrewd, I couldn’t deny.

I cleaned my glasses, then wiped the palm-sized screen. Photo analysis isn’t my field. Presumably, there were experts on the case examining each pixel, assembling data. The Cubans, or whoever took the shot, had anticipated the scrutiny. That’s why the photo was cropped so tight. No trees in the background, no environmental markers except for a section of the dirt pit and dirt in the boy’s hair.

The dirt looked fresh, damp. Maybe sand, or a mix of sand and clay.

I looked at my hands. I’d showered, but there were still specks beneath my nails after my frenzied digging hours earlier. Was the dirt similar? Could be…

More obvious was that a patch of the boy’s hair was missing. A ragged rectangle near the left ear, as if someone had grabbed a clump and cut it with a knife. In the first photo sent by the kidnappers, Will’s hair was crow black, shoulder-length but even. Same with recent photos that newscasters had been showing on television.

Why would kidnappers want a sample of the boy’s hair? DNA, my first guess, until I gave it some thought. After my talk with Harrington, I had researched the Cuban Program. Under the guise of medical experiments, interrogators had tortured American POWs using techniques so perverse it disturbed even the Vietnamese jailers. Because the government feared exposure, fifteen of the men, all irreversibly maimed, were moved secretly to a Cuban prison, where the Malvados continued their experiments.

The three interrogators weren’t really specialists. They were freaks who enjoyed inflicting pain. Fiends -a word with darker connotations in Spanish. If one had cut a chunk of the boy’s hair, it wasn’t to collect DNA. He’d taken it as a trophy… or a joke: Look, I’ve got the Indian kid’s scalp!

I realized I was shaking as I studied the photo, unusual for me. Disconcerting. Emotion is a symptom, the by-product of a reality that’s been skewed by personal interest. I cleared the screen. Decided to check Harrington’s message. Good timing.

It read: “G-R off X-F. 0-sig.”