If Marcia knew, she’d snitch and prove my point. She’d be the epitome of the identification with the aggressor theory. God, how I had wanted that point to be proven in the past few months! I had yearned for it, hungered for it, I who had never in my life had trouble telling the good guys from the bad.
Then it hit me. It could be proven right now. It would mean risking my life for what I wanted the world to know — an awful risk to prove a point. It would mean helping these thugs, these Dead End kids. But what publicity for the theory! The world was watching.
The men were coming closer and from where I sat you could see them now as men and not as shapes. I thought it over for two seconds. Then I decided it was no contest.
“Your turn to look out the window, Marcia,” I said and leaned back.
Then it happened. Fast. Marcia looked and yelled the message to the hijacker. Without hesitation. The passenger across the aisle looked at Marcia with shock. The hijacker came forward and peered out our window as I cooperatively continued to press back in my chair, insuring his thorough view. Then, he ran down the aisle, past first class, yelling as he went. There were shouts, confusion.
I ducked to the floor, pulling Marcia down with me. People were screaming. Then it was over and I was still alive. Uniformed men came aboard and began to guide passengers off the plane.
I approached the modest airport, vaguely registering the name of the country I was in, but mostly making sure that the passenger who had been across the aisle from me got to the reporters first.
I dawdled behind the security guards and listened to a frustrated reporter filling in time with his introduction of me before he could get past the guard.
“I’m about to talk to her,” he said. “This woman whose courage everyone has so admired as she has seen her share of tragedy, her only daughter, Angie, kidnapped nine months ago by the Symbiosis Libertarian Army, a. case that so closely paralleled the Patty Hearst one.
“Angie announced to the public, that she, herself, had joined the group. Angie, as you know, was convicted last month, in spite of her mother’s immense efforts in court to prove that the girl had been brainwashed by her captors.
“The irony of tonight’s situation is that, as you’ve just heard in the interview with the passenger who sat across the aisle, Angie’s mother was sitting next to a young woman who was so thoroughly brainwashed in the eight hours of the hijacking that she betrayed a whole planeload of people.”
The reporter was past the guard now and no more introductions were necessary. The world not only knew me but in fact, had become pretty tired of me.
“Can you talk to us,” he asked and thrust the microphone at me.
I smiled at him. “Yes, of course. I’ll be glad to. I have something to say.”
Ransom
by Michael J. Hanson
The kidnappers were caught, their victim rescued — but what became of the ransom money? a $30,000 conundrum!
The Caldwell kidnapping was solved. It was a simple enough case, as kidnappings go. A couple of bunglers from the Midwest passing through town decided to kidnap a Tucson woman to get her husband to finance their trip to California. The Chief of the Tucson Police Department and the Sheriff of Pima County worked hand in glove and, with an assist from the FBI fingerprint division, the two badmen were turned over to the Federal Attorney in Phoenix. What the courts would do with them was a different matter; the police had done their work.
The kidnappers hadn’t made much preparation for the job. They drove around till they came to a neighborhood with expensive homes and grabbed the first woman they saw that morning — Mrs. Harold Caldwell out walking her chihuahua in the desert near her home. They drove her to a motel at the other end of town, found out her name, terrorized her into writing a note to her husband and went about collecting the ransom. One stood guard over Mrs. Caldwell while the other took off in the car.
He drove to the Caldwell house and deposited the note in the mailbox. He then drove to a phone booth outside a MacDonald’s fourteen blocks away and called Mr. Caldwell, getting him out of bed. He told him to look in his mailbox and hung up. He then drove thirty blocks to another booth and called Mr. Caldwell again. He told him to stay near the phone and wait for instructions. He warned him not to call the police if he wanted to see his wife alive.
When the kidnapper called the third time three Tucson officers were listening in on the call, one on the extension and two on special taps that had been installed on the Caldwell line. Experienced Mountain Bell operators were alerted to help the police trace calls into the home. This call was specific.
“Get thirty thousand together in tens and twenties — no fives and no fifties. Get back to the phone and wait. Don’t get any ideas about calling the police.”
He hung up and three cops exhaled noisily. They were letting out the breath they had been holding during the phone conversation. They were also expressing their relief that the kidnapper didn’t know the police had been called in.
Detective Lieutenant Koertz radioed police communications center on his portable radio. At the same time he was barking over the phone to the operator who was tracing the call, and he was questioning Mr. Caldwell. “Where’d the call come from? What do you mean, you haven’t traced it yet?... Put me through to the dispatcher of mobile units... Where do you bank, Mr. Caldwell?... What do you mean, a public phone at the airport? I’ve got to know which one. Okay, I got it.
“Now get me the Sheriff’s office... Clear the air. I’ve got to get a message out to all mobile units... What’s that, Mr. Caldwell? Downtown Bank? All right... Get the nearest officer to Downtown Bank and tell him to requisition all the paper cutters and all the help he can get and start chopping out pieces of paper the size of a dollar. I want two thousand of them right away. And I don’t want the public to see it...
“This is Lieutenant Koertz of Tucson Police Department. Get your nearest man to the last phone booth on Concourse B at the airport fight away. I know I can’t order Sheriffs deputies anywhere but do it anyway. It’s an emergency. If there’s anyone talking on the phone, hold him. And get your fingerprint crew there right away... Mr. Caldwell, get over to the bank and put anything on a piece of paper and sign your name. They’ll be waiting for you and they’ll give you the Monopoly stuff. Move!... Get your guy there now. The sheriff will back me up. Call the chief deputy right after you dispatch the car... Caldwell! Get right back. We can’t answer the phone for you.”
Mr. Caldwell left for the bank while Lieutenant Koertz, now talking to the chief deputy of the sheriff’s department, was coordinating the efforts, of his men with those of the county deputies.
Patrolman Hector Mendoza, assigned to the traffic detail, was the officer closest to the bank when the call came in. He was fairly new to the force, but not too many years before he had been a tough kid from South Tucson. He wasn’t one to stand on ceremony. Six feet tall and 190 pounds, Officer Mendoza ordinarily presented an imposing appearance; in uniform, his impact was formidable. He wore his hat low, and the visor obscured his gentle blue eyes.
He strode into the office of the bank vice president, who was talking on the telephone. The vice president said, “Yes?” and Officer Mendoza motioned him to conclude his phone conversation. Then he said, “This is a police matter and it concerns your bank. Get every papercutter you have into this office and someone to operate each one. Also get a lot of paper — phone books! I’ll explain as we go along.”