“But not in this case.”
“Not so far.”
I work with a police artist named Marijke Wilcke, trying to dredge up the image of the man with the dog. Since I just caught a glimpse of the guy, I’m not optimistic. Shoffler insists “Dutchie,” as he calls Marijke, is “real good at coaxing details outta eyewitnesses. She’s just about a genius.”
We have trouble right away, trying to establish the shape of the man’s face. The fact that he was wearing a ruff, too, creates problems, not only because it makes it hard for me to determine the length of his face, but also because it obscures the conjunction of neck and shoulder, his jawline, even his ears. The neatly trimmed goatee and mustache don’t help, either. Despite Marijke’s skill at translating my vague impressions onto the page, the result is vague and generic. The man stares blankly back from the final image, neatly groomed hair and trimmed goatee and mustache, just as I remember it, but the rest is just a guess.
Shoffler stops by to take a look.
“What do you think?” Marijke asks.
“Looks like they’re all on the same bus.”
“What?”
“Marijke and Larry – he’s another sketch artist – they been through this with three other eyewitnesses who saw this guy with your kids.” To Marijke he says: “Go on. Give him the tour.”
She brings up in sequence five versions of the man with the dog, all of which prominently feature the goatee and sharply trimmed mustache. Apart from that, the sketches vary in head shape and other features. “Facial hair,” Marijke sighs, “especially when it is trimmed into geometric shapes and clean lines – it’s just so dramatic it makes the other features fade. What you remember is the facial hair. Maybe,” she says in her slightly accented English, “it’s even pasted on.”
Shoffler shakes his head.
“And that ruff around his neck – that’s another problem.”
Marijke flicks back to my sketch. “You are happy with this one?” she asks me.
I shrug. “I guess.”
When she taps her mouse a few times, the hair and the beard and mustache disappear. Clean-shaven, the man could be anybody.
“I make a composite from all of them,” Marijke says, “then I do one with the facial hair, one clean-shaven, okay?”
The official position shifts. With the boys stipulated as the victims of a kidnapping, an FBI agent is assigned to the case. Shoffler tells me ahead of time that Judy Jones is very young but very smart. “A rookie, but a real firecracker.”
We gather in the family room. Shoffler introduces her and she explains to us that the Bureau’s involvement in kidnapping cases has been routine since the Lindbergh case.
Liz sits next to me and holds my hand, although there’s nothing intimate about this. We’re like two strangers at the site of a disaster, our touch the instinctual clutch for human contact. Liz and I present a united front in public – and that includes sessions like this one. But except for moments when she breaks down and needs – literally – a shoulder to cry on, she’s formal and distant, clearly uncomfortable with our forced reunion. I’ve yet to catch sight of her, for instance, in her bathrobe.
“The depth of the Bureau’s involvement varies,” Judy Jones says, carefully making eye contact with each of us. “Since we are satisfied with police conduct in the investigation, our role will be limited to support.”
Jack immediately protests. “What – the FBI’s so hung up on terrorists a couple of kids don’t matter? Don’t my grandsons deserve your full attention?”
I think the limited role for the Bureau is a plus, but Jack doesn’t see it that way. From the way he goes on about how the boys deserve the best, it’s clear that despite the memorable series of FBI screwups over the past decade (Ruby Ridge, Waco, the spy Robert Hanssen, the embarrassing repression of leads in the 9/11 attack, the shocking errors at Bureau labs), Jack harbors fantasies of Bureau efficiency and excellence that go back to Eliot Ness.
Jones assures us that the Bureau’s limited role is not because the FBI is “preoccupied with homeland security. We’re prepared to lend whatever support Detective Shoffler requires and requests.”
“How can you be satisfied with the police conduct?” Jack persists. “They thought Alex was the guy and while they’re putting him through the wringer, the real guy’s making tracks.” He throws up his hands.
“I understand your feelings. With hindsight, we’re all geniuses. But you have to understand that there’s nothing in the conduct of the case that warrants criticism. As soon as he was summoned, Detective Shoffler took steps to secure the scene – a very difficult scene to secure, by the way. He immediately launched a vigorous search and inquiry. In the time since the boys disappeared, he and his team have questioned a large number of witnesses, some of them more than once. He’s made a good liaison with the District police. He’s pursued the case by the book, and that includes” – she glances my way and offers a tiny sympathetic grimace – “suspecting and questioning Mr. Callahan.”
“How’s that?” Jack says, his face red with belligerence. “They waste their time with Alex here, and boom – no one’s even looking for my grandsons. Everyone thinks they’re dead.”
Jones looks down at her fingers – the nails are bitten raw. “In the field of criminal justice,” she says, “we are all to a certain extent students of history. We have to rely on known precedent. In suspecting Mr. Callahan, Detective Shoffler was going with history. The truth is that most child abductions and murders are committed by parents – especially when those parents are separated.” She hefts the police file. “This kidnapper didn’t go by the book. You just don’t come across many cases – I couldn’t find a single one – where a kidnapping occurs many miles from a victim’s home and yet the kidnapper returns to that home, where he has one of the victims place a phone call to a parent, a phone call that is not a ransom plea.” She shakes her head. “It’s all very risky behavior.”
“What about the T-shirt?” I ask. “Do you have any theories about that?”
She sighs and glances at Detective Shoffler. “There’s nothing in the database, really nothing. Maybe some kind of animal sacrifice. We’re looking into that.”
Shoffler grimaces. “What I think is maybe the T-shirt was just to throw off pursuit. Not that we let up on other suspects or possibilities. You got two kids missing, the search is really relentless. But until that lab test came back, it was natural to focus certain resources on Alex.” He wags his head sadly. “I think the T-shirt was deliberate and it worked like a charm.”
“A red herring,” Jones says, “almost literally. Except the fish on the T-shirt was a whale instead of a herring.”
Liz groans and her head droops.
“This guy is too fucking cute,” my father says.
“Detective Shoffler has asked me to pick up a couple of threads in the investigation,” Jones tells us. “First, that folded rabbit – I’ve already checked into that.”
“Really – what did you find out?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Not much. We ran it by an origami expert. He said it was cleverly constructed and of high intermediate level, but that’s about all he could tell us. It’s now with a second expert, but I’m not very confident this lead’s going anywhere. Like any other subculture you get into, from skydiving to candlepins – origami has more devotees than you’d think possible.”