R. Ellory - A Quiet Vendetta

They went through McCahill’s records with a fine-tooth comb, they checked his ex-wife, his present girlfriend, his drinking buddies, his mother. They searched his apartment in Shreveport and found nothing that in any way indicated he had been forewarned of the events that were to befall him and his charge in New Orleans. There was no shortage of people who would have been more than happy to upset Charles Ducane, but that was standard fare for any politician. The returning Christ would have prompted public protests and harassment lawsuits. That was just the way of the world.

Tuesday afternoon Leland Fraschetti put an A.P.B. through the system for McCahill’s car. Every police officer in Louisiana would now be looking for it. A description and photograph of the girl was processed through the same system, and four thousand hard copies of that image were distributed through the ranks. But the truth of the matter was that the kidnapper had already gained six days on them. McCahill had been dead by midnight on Wednesday 20 August. It was now Tuesday 26 August. Catherine Ducane could have been in Paris by now, and they would have been none the wiser.

Leland Fraschetti did not sleep. He was a man who had never suffered from insomnia; it was not in his nature. He knew his place in the grand scheme of things, and he knew everybody else’s place too. He did not, as a general rule, take his cases home, but this one was different. It was not merely the fact that Catherine was a governor’s daughter. It was not the clamorings of the vulture press. It was not that the upper ranks were hollering all the way from Washington, threatening to send down one of their own details and get this mess fixed up. It was something else entirely. Fraschetti, never one to trust anything so abstract and unreliable as hunch or intuition, nevertheless felt that there was something else going on here. He did not think there would be any ransom demands. He did not believe that the tap system now wired into Charles Ducane’s house would record the electronically-altered voice of any kidnapper. He did not imagine that at any time a single finger belonging to a pretty nineteen-year-old girl would be delivered in a jiffy bag to the doorstep of Ducane’s mansion. Leland, ascribing his perception to nothing other than gut feeling, knew that there was a great deal more going on than the evidence suggested.

Had you asked him for his rationale, his reasoning, his motivation for this belief (and oh, how Leland snatched at any opportunity to detail such things), he would have shrugged his shoulders, closed his eyes for just a moment, and then looked you dead-square in the face and told you he didn’t know. He didn’t know, but somehow he knew .

Wednesday morning came and went. A little more than twelve hours and it would be four days since the discovery of the body, and though the immediate news flashes and guesswork reports had died their thirty-six-hour death in the journals and on the tube, still the fact remained that a governor’s daughter had seemingly vanished from the face of the earth. Ducane was already threatening to come down personally, but had been dissuaded from such a course of action by his advisors and legal briefs. Ducane’s presence, more as a father than a politician, would have stirred up the press all over again, and press attention was the very last thing in the world the FBI wanted. Not only would it generate the usual seven and a half thousand crank calls, every single one of them presenting another lead that would have to be followed up, it also – and perhaps more relevantly – would serve to highlight the fact that the most powerful internal investigative body in the country had accomplished nothing.

A little after two that same afternoon, as Leland was once again staring at a detailed map of New Orleans, its brightly-colored map pins indicating the route McCahill and Catherine Ducane had taken from the point they entered the city, an agent called Paul Danziger stepped through into the office and told Fraschetti there was a call he should take.

Fraschetti told him to deal with it himself.

Danziger insisted.

Fraschetti, on edge, frustrated more than he could ever remember, turned and snatched at the receiver.

‘Yes!’ he barked.

‘Agent Leland Fraschetti,’ a voice on the other end stated calmly, matter-of-factly.

‘It is. Who is this?’

‘Did you know that Ford only ever built sixteen thousand hardtop versions of the Mercury Turnpike Cruiser?’

The hairs on the nape of Fraschetti’s neck stood to attention. ‘Who is this?’ Fraschetti asked again. He inched around the desk and sat down. He looked up at Danziger, raised his eyebrows. Danziger nodded, confirming that they were tracing the call even as he spoke.

‘Shame of it is, I really loved that car. I mean I really loved that car, you know?’

Fraschetti’s negotiator training kicked in on automatic. Say nothing negative. Everything positive, everything reassuring. ‘I can only imagine. It is a truly beautiful car.’

‘Uh-huh, sure as hell is. I trust you and your colleagues are taking good care of her. You never know, I might need her back someday.’

‘Yes, we’re taking very good care of the car, Mr…?’

‘No names yet, Leland. Not just yet.’

Fraschetti could not place the accent. It was American, but there were undertones… of where?

‘So how can we help you?’ Fraschetti asked.

‘Be patient,’ the voice said. ‘There is a reason for all of this. A very good reason. In a little while, perhaps a day, maybe two, it will all become apparent. You’re gonna need the girl back, right?’

‘We sure are. She’s okay?’

‘She’s fine, a little temperamental, a little headstrong, but then you only have to look at her background, her family, and you could guess she was gonna be something of a handful.’ The voice laughed. There was something intensely disturbing about that sound.

‘So, as I was saying, you’re gonna need the girl, but in order to get the girl you’re gonna have to trade her for something.’

‘Of course,’ Fraschetti said. ‘Of course we understood all along that there would have to be a trade.’

‘Good enough. So I’ll be in touch. I just wanted you to know that you were doing a fine job, and in all honesty I wouldn’t feel the same way if someone else was handling things. I’m keeping tabs on everything that’s going on. I understand it must be somewhat stressful, but I wouldn’t want you guys to be losing any more sleep over this. This is a personal thing, and we’re gonna get it all figured out in a personal kind of way.’

‘Okay, I understand that, but-’

The line went dead in Fraschetti’s ear.

He waited a second, two, three, and then he was standing in the doorway of his office screaming for the result.

‘Call box,’ Danziger shouted from the other side of the main office. ‘Call box on Gravier… got two units on the way there now.’

The same place as the car, Fraschetti thought, and he knew, he just knew once again, that by the time those two units reached Gravier they would find absolutely nothing.

The Washington units arrived a little after seven. It was raining. Leland Fraschetti had not slept for the better part of thirty-six hours. Governor Charles Ducane had called the attorney general himself, figuring, perhaps, that as far as the legal and judicial system was concerned he couldn’t get much higher, and the attorney general had called the director of the FBI personally and told him to get his ass in gear.

This is a governor’s daughter we’re talking about, Bob , Attorney General Richard Seidler had told the director. A goddamned Louisiana governor’s daughter, and we have a bunch of half-assed kindergarten cops meandering all over the countryside with their thumbs up their asses waiting for someone to tell ’em the game is already in the third quarter. This is your nightmare, Bob, and believe me we better wake up in the morning all relieved and ready for breakfast or the shit’s gonna fly six ways to Sunday .