“What is the boy’s full name, Mr. Reynolds?
“Jeffry. Jeffry.”
“Is that G-e-o-f or J-e-f-f… ?”
“What? Oh. J-e-f-f-r-y. Jeffry.”
“Any middle name?”
“No. None.”
“How old is he, Mr. Reynolds?”
“Eight.”
“Birth date?”
“September ninth.”
“Then he was just eight is that right?”
“Yes. Just eight.”
“How tall is he, Mr. Reynolds?”
“I …” Reynolds paused. “I don’t know. I never… I don’t know. Who ever measures children? Who ever expects something like this to…”
“Well, approximately, Mr. Reynolds? Three feet? Four feet?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Well, average height for that age is somewhere between four and four and a half feet. He’s about average height, isn’t he, Mr. Reynolds?”
“Yes. Or maybe a little taller. He’s a handsome boy. Tall for his age.”
“How much does he weigh, Mr. Reynolds?”
“I don’t know.”
Meyer sighed. “What about his build? Stout? Medium? Slim?”
“Slender. Not too stout, and not too thin. Just… well built for a boy his age.”
‘‘His complexion, Mr. Reynolds? Florid, sallow, pale?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, is he a dark kid?”
“No, no. He has blond hair. Very fair skin. Is that what you mean?”
“Yes, thank you. Fair,” Meyer said, and he made a note. “Hair blond.” He paused. “Color of his eyes, Mr. Reynolds?”
“Will you get him back?” Reynolds asked suddenly.
Meyer stopped writing. “We’re going to try,” he said. “We’re going to try our damnedest, Mr. Reynolds.”
* * * *
The description of the boy was phoned in to the 87th and then transmitted to Headquarters, and the teletype alarm went out to fourteen states. The teletype read:
KIDNAP VICTIM JEFFRY REYNOLDS AGE EIGHT HEIGHT APPROX FIFTY-TWO INCHES WEIGHT APPROX SIXTY POUNDS XXXXXXXX HAIR BLOND EYES BLUE STRAWBERRY BIRTHMARK RIGHT BUTTOCK XXXXXXXX SCAR LEFT ARM CHILDHOOD INJURY FRACTURE XXXXX FATHER’S NAME CHARLES REYNOLDS XXXX MOTHER DECEASED XXXXXX ANSWERS TO NAME JEFF XXXXXX WEARING BRIGHT RED SWEATER BLUE DUNGAREE TROUSERS WHITE SOX SNEAKERS XXXXX NO HAT XXXXX NO GLOVES XXXXX NO JEWELRY XXXXX MAY BE CARRYING TOY RIFLE XXXXX MAY BE IN COMPANY OF MALE XXXXX LAST SEEN VICINITY SMOKE RISE ISOLA SEVENTEEN HUNDRED THIRTY HOURS STD TIME XXXXX STAND BY FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTION ROAD BLOCK COOPERATION XXXXX CONTACT HQ COMMAND ISOLA ALL INFO ETC XXXXXXXXXX
The message rolled out of teletype machines in police precincts, state trooper command posts, dinky shacks housing local one-horse police forces, anywhere in the surrounding fourteen states where the law enforcement agencies owned and used a teletype machine. It rolled out on a long white sheet with all the monotony of a foreign newspaper. The message immediately following it on the tape read:
REPORTED STOLEN XXX 1949 FORD SEDAN XXXXX EIGHT CYLS XXXX GRAY XXXXX ID NUMBER 598L 02303 LICENSE PLATE RN 6120 XXXXXX PARKED SUPERMKT PETER SCHWED DRIVE AND LANSING LANE EIGHT HUNDRED HOURS THIS MORNING XXXX CONTACT ONE-OH-TWO PCT RIVERHEAD XXXXX
* * * *
The gray Ford pulled into the rutted driveway and bounced along the road which had once belonged to a Sands Spit potato farmer. The road, the land, the farmhouse itself had been sold a long time ago to a man who had purchased the property in the hope that the development boom would reach this isolated neck of the city’s suburb. The development boom had come nowhere near reaching the erstwhile potato farm. The speculator, in fact, dropped dead before his dream was realized, and the farm and its adjacent lands, cropless now, run-down, slowly succumbing to the overwhelming encroachment of nature, were handled by a real-estate agent who managed the property for the speculator’s daughter, a drunken hag of forty-seven who lived in the city and slept with sailors of all ages. The agent considered it quite a coup when he managed to rent the old farmhouse for a month in the middle of October. Suckers weren’t that plentiful in the fall of the year. In the summertime, he could tell prospective tenants that the farm was near the beaches—which it wasn’t, being in the center of Sands Spit and nowhere near either of the peninsula’s two shores—and possibly inveigle a city dweller or two into occupying the decrepit wreck for a while. But as soon as Labor Day rolled around, the agent’s hopes vanished. The drunken daughter of the speculator would have to find other means of buying her whisky and her sailors. There would be no income from the sagging farmhouse until summer once more returned to Sands Spit. His delight at renting the hulk in the middle of October knew no bounds. Nor did he ever once realize the careful planning that had preceded the rental. He was not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth. Cash was paid on the line. He asked no questions, and expected no answers. Besides, the tenants seemed like a nice young couple. If they wanted to freeze their behinds off in the middle of nowhere, that was their business. His business, like that of the landholders of old, was simply to collect the tithes, man, simply to collect the tithes.
The Ford’s headlights probed the blackness of the road, swept the gray farmhouse, the beam swinging around as the car took the curve and then came to a full-braked halt. The engine died. The lights went out. The door on the driver’s side opened and a young man in his late twenties stepped into the darkness and ran toward the front door. He knocked gently, three times, and then waited.
“Eddie?” a woman’s voice asked.
“It’s me, Kathy. Open up.”
The door opened wide. Light splashed onto the frozen earth. The girl looked out into the yard.
“Sy?” she said.
“In the car. He’ll be here. Ain’t you gonna kiss me?”
“Oh, Eddie, Eddie,” she said, and she threw herself into his arms. She was a woman no older than twenty-four, nor was she a woman who could conceivably be called a “girl” of twenty-four. For whereas there was a delicate loveliness to her face, the beauty had been overlaid with a veneer of hardness, the look of shellac worn thin, marred by years of use and misuse. Kathy Folsom was a woman of twenty-four and perhaps, perhaps she had even been a woman of twelve at one time. She wore a straight black skirt and a blue sweater, the sleeves shoved up to her elbows. Her hair was obviously bleached, showing dark at the roots and at the part, but on Kathy it somehow did not appear cheap, it only seemed untended, uncared for. She held her husband to her with a desperation that had been mounting ever since he had left the farmhouse that afternoon. She kissed him longingly, her arms wrapped around his waist, and then she drew away from him and stared up into his face, and she smiled with a tenderness that was embarrassing even to herself, and then, to cover her embarrassment, she touched his cheek quickly and said, “Eddie, Eddie,” and then, sharply, “Are you all right? Did everything go all right?”