“Dolls? What dolls?” I asked.
She waved to shut me up. The dolls came later.
It took awhile, Elizabeth told me, to get some relevant info out of the fathers of the kids. They turned out to be con men, specializing in fleecing the rich, preferably doctors, dentists, and other top-income medical types who didn’t know about small, exclusive hedge and mutual funds. The con men kept their schemes going for two years, then suddenly folded their corporations and kept the money stolen from their clients, in cash, at home.
Shanigan was an investor in funds set up by the fathers of the kids.
He lost serious money.
Rather than go to the authorities, and facing the delays such actions produce, he became the winged avenger, or kidnapper, rather.
The con men, when they were contacted by cell phone (a throw-away item that couldn’t be traced), suspected that they were being blackmailed by one of their former investors but had no idea who. Having destroyed their records in a fire, they had no list of names for the FBI to check.
Shanigan put the kids on the phone, too. Both were begging their fathers to please save them. The little girl shouted something about a boat, and said, “You too,” and the letters M and E, before being shut up by what sounded like a slap in the face.
Shanigan, talking to the fathers — at an interval of some ten minutes between the two calls — gave them the coordinates of a parking lot belonging to an out-of-business shopping mall. The fathers were told to appear, at eight the next morning, with the money, at the mall’s southwest corner. Shanigan would be there with the kids handcuffed to a metal fence, at the mall’s northeast corner. The fathers were to put down the money, one suitcase each. Shanigan would walk toward them, holding the key for the handcuffs. He advised the fathers not to come armed, for his associate would be watching the scene, and shoot them, and the kids, with a sniper’s rifle, if anything at all looked the slightest bit suspicious.
“Yes?” Shanigan had asked. “Would you mind repeating my instructions?”
Shanigan had used his own car, a golden Toyota with stolen North Carolina plates, to kidnap the kids, both at locations between the school bus stop and their homes’ driveways. Shanigan caught both on the same day. Using the old-fashioned method of pressing a cloth soaked in chloroform in their faces, he made them unconscious, then drove them to a deserted airstrip some thirty miles out of Boston where the fast Mooney airplane was waiting. He hid the car and flew the kids to Shanigan Island, Maine, a short distance, especially in time. On the island he woke them, had his way with them, made the phone calls to their fathers, recorded their voices saying, “Hi Daddy, Hi Daddy!” and killed them. He had manufactured two life-sized figures out of bamboo and glue and dressed the dolls in the children’s clothes.
The FBI, Elizabeth told me, followed, after the complaints came in, a multitude of leads, only one of which vaguely pointed to Maine. The girl had mentioned a boat, so she had to be somewhere on the coast, and the letters M and E, which indicate Maine, are painted on the sides of boats registered in Maine. Then there was “you too,” which made no sense. “Love you, too?” “You’re in danger, too?” M and E were pronounced unclearly. Maybe she said M and A, which would be Massachusetts. The call had made her father very nervous. He babbled, cried, didn’t make much sense except that he was hoping that the FBI wouldn’t worry about the money, where he got it, he meant to say. He wanted to make a deaclass="underline" He gave them the information about his daughter’s kidnapper, and there would be no other law enforcement agency involved. No SEC, no IRS, etc. Yes, please?
“What information?” the motherly agent, a top investigator and interviewer, suddenly shrieked. She yelled, shaking him by the shoulders, that so far he had told her diddly squat. Well, the father stammered, there was the parking lot he helped the FBI to find. And he had told them about the voice of the kidnapper, a white voice, with a New York accent, faint. The kidnapper had to be an educated man, a professional, one of their former dentist or doctor clients.
I pictured the scene as Elizabeth described what happened next. Shanigan buries the kids’ bodies, takes the dolls, and flies to the airstrip outside Boston. He gets in his waiting car.
Next scene: There are the dolls, handcuffed to the fence, so that they seem to be standing up, and they are yelling in the real kids’ recorded voices. There is the hooded and caped figure walking diagonally across the empty parking lot to meet the fathers walking toward the kids. Mr. Hood throws the handcuff key at the fathers, deliberately missing their outstretched hands by ten feet so that they have to walk away from him to get it. Mr. Hood walks on, picks up the suitcases left by the fathers, walks to his car, drives away leisurely (nobody is after him, the fathers are staring at the rag dolls dressed up like their kids). Shanigan drives to Bunkport, a six-hour drive at most. He parks the car in Bunkport, walks to the harbor carrying his suitcases. His kayak, that he dropped off using his powerboat some time before, is waiting at the harbor. He paddles it home to the island and has a good sleep. He is still not done. The next day he ferries himself in the powerboat back to Bunkport and drives to Boston in a rental from Enterprise, Bunkport, that he leaves at the airport. He now walks to the airstrip, flies home.
“Figured it out nicely,” Elizabeth said. “And it would never have been un-figured if you hadn’t put the name of your boat in your ad.”
“You too.”
That’s right, Elizabeth told me. “A boat with that name, on the Maine Coast, in Bunkport. That tied it all together for us.”
Which made me a suspect. For the little girl had seen my boat, and told her father, who didn’t get it, who told the FBI, who didn’t get it, but then the ad told the FBI and this time they got it and sent their special agent. Elizabeth.
“Who needed a change of scenery,” Elizabeth said, “what with her non-breast and her runaway husband.”
“You were a suspect,” Elizabeth admitted. “The ad you placed proves you’re somewhat of a character, maybe a little crazy, and the kidnapper/killer was obviously crazy too. The little girl mentioned your boat. You don’t work. You have all the time in the world to be bad.” She smiled. “But you don’t fit any of our kidnapper/child abuser profiles.” She kissed my cheek. “Look how you treat Tillie. There’s your interest in nature. You’re respectful of kids. You do have too much money, though.”
“Frugal,” I said.
“And the nephew and former henchman of a mysterious money maker.” She nodded. “Known as Uncle Joe. We heard about the inheritance which had to be much more than what it says in the probate, and your disabled-veteran monthly check.” She shook her head. “But you don’t seem to care about money. Old boat, aging pickup truck, regular cabin, fuzzy-haired mongrel for a dog, grow your own vegetables, catch your own fish, wear coveralls of which you own six pairs, all the same color.”
“Hey,” I said.
She scratched my beard lovingly. “That’s why I’m so fond of you. And you aren’t stingy, it’s just that you don’t care about the usual trappings of a man of your wealth. But the kidnapper was really fond of money. Nothing but the best for Dr. Freddie Fastbuck Shanigan.
“And there we are,” Elizabeth said. “Here we have our true suspect. Not the Sisters, not Priscilla, not Tom Tipper, none of your drinking buddies seem capable of killing little kids for cash.”
“DNA?” I asked. “You guys must have been given the dolls with the recorder inside. There were no fingerprints, hairs, anything?”
There were none. Shanigan was a doctor, used to working with rubber gloves on. Besides, neither his DNA nor fingerprints were on record.