Well… nothing really. Alfred Fowler hadn’t looked at the driver. He’d been too fascinated by his discovery of the corpse.
How about a license number?
Ah… no. Alfred Fowler hadn’t caught it, and Martha Fowler couldn’t see it. Martha Fowler’s vision wasn’t what it used to be.
“What kind of a car was it?” Shayne pressed.
“Old. Dark on the bottom, light on top. Just an old car,” Alfred Fowler answered vaguely.
“Do you know the make?”
Neither of the Fowlers knew. “I don’t keep up with car designs anymore,” said Alfred Fowler. “Can’t; they all look alike to me.”
Shayne felt as if he was very close yet very far away from something tangible in the Littrel boy’s death.
“There was the cadaver and the driver, that’s all?” he pressed. “You didn’t see anyone in the back seat of the car?”
“No one was in the back sea,” said Alfred Fowler emphatically.
“There was that windshield, Alfred,” Martha put in.
“What about it, Mrs. Fowler?” Shayne said, instantly alert.
“It was cracked. It was like maybe… maybe a rock had hit it. It was sorta… sorta spider webby on the passenger side. Maybe that’s a clue. Is it, Mr. Shayne?”
“It could be, Mrs. Fowler,” the detective said, nodding reflexively from deep thought.
Outside the Fowler house, Shayne sat behind the steering wheel of the Buick and stared without seeing. What had he gained?
From what he had learned from the Fowlers, there was no real tie, nothing that said concretely the cadaver — if there had been a cadaver — Fowler claimed to have seen was Tony Littrel.
Shayne slammed the steering wheel. The contradiction of the case gnawed him. On the one hand, the kidnapings had been timed. They’d been pulled off one, two, three, four. That took long observation. That smelled of someone who was thorough, patient. And the pickups had been precisioned.
On the other hand, there was the brazenness: possibly a body being hauled like a passenger in the front seat of a car, certainly the dumping of the body in the openness of a club parking lot at an early evening hour, certainly the delivery of a ransom demand, then the telephoning of a newspaper reporter.
It almost was like someone was secretly laughing at the police.
Shayne lit a cigarette, drew smoke deep. Had they missed a clue in the individual pickup of the kids? He mentally reviewed the rest of the information Andretti had given him.
It appeared as if Lisa English had been the first to be snatched by the kidnapers. Lisa was a girl of order. Tuesdays were library days. Every Tuesday morning, while walking to Urbandale High School, Lisa returned books to the Urban-dale Public Library. After school, on Tuesdays, Lisa returned to the library where she normally spent an hour to an hour-and-a-half.
Then she walked the seven blocks to her home, usually arriving between five-fifteen and five-forty-five p.m. She had been in the library Tuesday; she had not arrived at her home. Her checked out books had been found scattered on an intersection sidewalk two blocks from the library.
Tony Littrel may have been kidnaped next. Andretti had said it was his routine to ride his motorcycle from Kennedy High School to the recreation center every Tuesday where he was on a handball court until six. He normally went from the center to his home. He had been on the court this Tuesday, had not arrived home, and his cycle had been found at the recreation center.
Jack Caulkins, a student at Miami High School, had three interests — gymnastics, physical fitness and chess — and one passionate dislike; his second father, Jason Bundy, a young lawyer on the city attorney’s staff.
Jack Caulkins’ mother had divorced, remarried too quickly for the boy. Jack had retaliated by being argumentative, disobedient, antagonistic at home, and by seeking comfort and understanding with Randolph Parker, a retired Miami High School instructor and chess friend.
The boy and widower played chess at Parker’s small home every school day evening from five to eight o’clock. The cutoff hour was at Parker’s insistence. He also was using the three-hour, five-day-a-week period for subtle counseling, attempting to ease the boy into acceptance of a new man in the parental home.
Caulkins had left Parker at exactly eight o’clock Tuesday evening. Parker had stood in the doorway of the house and had watched the boy jog away.
Chris Jacobson had been rapped early in life too. Her father had been killed in Vietnam. But mother and daughter had been able to regroup, had found surprising sturdiness inborn in each other. The same persistence carried over to physical well-being. Mother and daughter didn’t need health problems. So they were bicyclists. Cycling helped keep them in good physical condition. And it was their habit to cycle nightly in Herman Park.
Except on Tuesdays. On Tuesdays, Chris came home from Tom Browne High School and prepared a light lunch so that it was ready with her mother’s arrival from daily chores at the mayor’s office at six. At seven Barbara Jacobson was off to join her bowling team. At eight Chris was alone on her bicycle in Herman Park.
After Lisa English and Tony Littrel, the kidnapers could have picked up Jack Caulkins and then Chris Jacobson, or Chris Jacobson and then Jack Caulkins. Order was not important…
Shayne moved the Buick away from the Fowler home. He drove too fast down the quiet street, cut across on a sidestreet and found an access road to the South Dixie Highway. He rolled along Dixie, heading toward the Orange Bowl Stadium.
He needed a lead, somebody tangible to chew on. He needed a common bond, something that would point. But all he had was four high school students, each in his or her teens. Okay, teens, students. Common bond. Then what? No two of them attended the same high school; their likes and dislikes were miles apart.
But…
Each was a creature of habit. In one way or another. At least on Tuesdays. Each had a rather set routine on Tuesdays. So it had allowed timing for kidnapers, someone with a keen eye.
Someone had pieced the routines, fitted the comings and goings to form a schedule. The habits, the routines, leant themselves to a timetable for snatching. The subjects were vulnerable.
Schedule. A common bond.
Another bond?
Each was the son or daughter of a city employee.
But that could figure. If you were going to demand a million dollars ransom from a city, and tell the mayor he was to make delivery of the city money, you wouldn’t kidnap just any four kids leaning against street lamps. You’d attempt to get close to the mayor, you’d grab offspring of public or semipublic personalities, kids who would get news print on Page One — against those who might draw Page Twelve.
Figure?
Yeah, figured.
Shayne wheeled into the parking lot at police headquarters, found an empty slot. He wanted to read the official report on the death of Tony Littrel. Perhaps the report would turn up some kind of lead. He didn’t expect much.
On a guess, he figured the kid had died from a bash on the skull with a gun butt. But the boy’s clothing might have produced telltale grains of dirt, lint. Pinpoints of plaster or brick might have been caught in his hair, under his fingernails. Any or all could produce a lead to a possible death site.
Inside, Shayne shoved his hat to the back of his head and marched on determined strides into the detective room. No one paid any particular attention to him until he was weaving through the clutter of desks used by the detectives. One looked up and said, “Hey, the lost has returned.”
Another said, “Hi yuh, Shayne. Go on in. The Chief is waiting for you.”
Shayne stopped and scowled. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, he wants you now, man!” Flannigan shook his head. “He’s climbing walls.”