A Night at the Operation (6 page)

Walking into my front hall, warmth enveloped me, and that did everything those miserable endorphins couldn’t accomplish. My mood immediately lightened, and my natural optimism (stop laughing!) returned. Sharon was just off licking her wounds, and I would certainly hear from her in the morning.

My buoyant mood lasted the entire length of the walk from the front door to the living room entrance, which was roughly five steps. Once I got a look at the living room, even a blazing fire in my nonexistent fireplace wouldn’t have been able to warm my heart.

The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, which I’d had installed to accommodate my admittedly enormous collection of comedy films on DVD and videotape, were empty. But that was only because every single one of the 2,394 films I had so carefully catalogued, categorized, and cross-referenced was on the floor of the living room, scattered to the four corners. The discs had been taken out of the boxes and strewn around, so that repairing and replacing them would take at least twice as long, assuming they hadn’t been damaged beyond repair. And some of those titles were irreplaceable.

The miserable little futon I was pretending was a sofa had been slashed with a very sharp blade, perhaps a box cutter or a razor. Stuffing was everywhere. If there had been other furniture in the room, I was sure it would have been equally ripped apart. Even the answering machine—a cassette-tape relic I’d inherited from my parents when I took over their house—was ripped from the wall and dashed to the floor.

My eyes searched frantically for Harry Lillis’s guitar, which the brilliant comic had sort of left me when he died, but thankfully it was still on a guitar stand in a corner of the room. It had not been damaged.

I didn’t know what someone had been looking for, but it sure seemed like they hadn’t found it.

And immediately, I began to worry about Sharon.

 

 

 

 

THE
New Brunswick police officers who arrived at my town
home
at eleven thirty at night were used to dealing with gang violence, armed robberies, the occasional murder, and at the very least, drunken college students. So a DVD collection in disarray did not especially excite them.

They did, however, ask me the same two questions (“Was this the way you found the room?” and “Can you think of anyone who might do this?”) until past three in the morning, and were threatening to do so until three the next morning, when my phone rang.

I hadn’t called Dutton at home, but had left a message for him at Midland Heights police headquarters. Clearly, the chief didn’t have much need for sleep, or had been out late, because he returned the call just as I was calculating how many hours in a row I had been awake.

I asked the two cops to excuse me and picked up the phone. “Get me out of here,” I hissed into the handset.

Dutton took a second, then said, “How did you know it was me?”

“I didn’t. Get me out of here.”

“I don’t have any jurisdiction there, Elliot. I can’t tell the officers to leave. Now, what happened?”

Much more loudly, I said, “I can’t come to the station now, Chief. The New Brunswick police officers aren’t done with me yet.” I put my hand over the mouthpiece and looked at the two cops. “It’s Barry Dutton from Midland Heights. Do you know the chief?”

They shook their heads, no.

Back into the phone, I said, “How urgent is the matter, Barry?”

“Barry?” I heard Dutton ask. “When did I give you permission . . .”

“That bad, huh?” I asked.

“All right, Elliot,” Dutton sounded tired. After all, he’d probably been up five or six hours longer than I had. “Put them on.”

I gestured to one of the cops. “He wants to talk to you,” I said.

“Me?” the cop, who was maybe twenty-five, asked.

“Yes,” I told him. “He asked for you specifically.”

The cop appeared flustered, but took the phone out of my hand. He listened for a good few moments. “Yes sir, Chief,” he said, and handed me the phone.

“Hello?” I said.

“You owe me big time,” Dutton said. “You’re lucky I was due at the office in three hours anyway. They’re going to drive you over. Now, tell me why it is I want to see you.”

“I think you’re wrong,” I told him quietly. “I think Sharon
is
in danger.”

 

 

THERE
aren’t a lot of cars on the road at three fifteen in the morning, so the New Brunswick cops got me to Dutton’s office before Dutton himself arrived. They spoke quietly to the overnight dispatcher, a Latino who looked like he’d been doing this job a long time and was still appalled at the hours. He nodded slowly, said something to them out of my earshot, and then the two cops left.

“Chief Dutton is on his way,” the dispatcher said. He gestured toward one of the molded plastic chairs lining the waiting area, and I sat.

There wasn’t much going on at police headquarters, which wasn’t a tremendous surprise. A large-bellied man in ugly pants came in to bother the dispatcher for a while, but was ignored. As he was in (relatively) plain clothes and carrying a gun, I’m guessing he was the detective on the really late or really early shift. Other than that, it was me and the dispatcher, who did his best to avoid looking at me, for quite some time.

Finally, the door opened, and I began to stand, expecting Dutton. But the little man who walked in, bringing a freezing breeze with him, was the chief’s exact opposite: small, thin, Caucasian, and unimposing.

“What’s up, Doc?” The dispatcher grinned.

“Just on my way home,” the little guy said. “Figured I’d drop the report by.” He waved a blue file toward the dispatcher, who nodded.

A sheet of paper from the file flew out and landed at my feet. I picked it up and handed it back to “Doc,” but almost snatched it back again when I saw the name Chapman printed at the top.

“Is this the autopsy report on Russell Chapman?” I asked the little man.

“Yuh,” he said. “Just finished it. You the detective?”

I considered it, but the dispatcher was watching. “No,” I said, “I’m not even an interested party.” And I sat down again, trying to vanish into thin air. Like Sharon.

The little man slid the file through the bulletproof glass and waited until the dispatcher looked at it, signed a form, and gave the form back to “Doc.” Then the little man yawned broadly and headed to the door.

He walked out just as Dutton walked in. The chief nodded at the dispatcher, then walked to me as I stood up.

“Why, exactly, am I here at this ungodly hour?” Dutton rumbled.

“Sharon’s missing,” I said.

Dutton looked at me. For a while. A long while.

“Why, exactly, am I here at this ungodly hour?” he repeated.

“I mean she’s
really
missing,” I said. “Up until now, I thought she was just off licking her wounds. Now I’m sure she’s being held somewhere against her will.”

Dutton’s eyebrows did a quick cha-cha on his forehead, but his voice stayed steady. “Let’s go talk in my office,” he said.

On the way there, he poured himself a cup of coffee that looked like it had been sitting on the counter in the hallway for six or seven weeks. He did not offer me a cup, and I was grateful.

Dutton opened the door to his office, turned on the light, and blinked a few times to adjust his eyes. He sat down behind his desk and gestured me to the chair in front of it. “Now get your breathing back to normal and tell me what you’re talking about,” he began.

“When I got back to the town house, everything in my living room had been tossed,” I told him. “The futon was slashed and the stuffing was all over the room. The DVDs were out of their boxes and scattered to the corners. The . . .”

“The DVDs?” Dutton’s eyes widened. He’s seen the DVD collection.

I nodded. “It was obvious someone was looking for something.”

“Or, they just wanted to hit you where it would really hurt.”

I hadn’t considered that. “But it’s too big a coincidence that this happens the same time Sharon vanishes. She didn’t just go away. She must have been taken.”

“Elliot, there’s no evidence that Sharon has been taken anywhere against her will. No signs of forced entry at her home, her office, or her parking space.”

I bit my lips. “Forced entry at a parking space?”

Dutton nodded. “No broken glass. No evidence anybody broke into her vehicle. She got into her car and she drove away.”

“Then maybe it was someone she knew,” I suggested.

“Maybe. But as a police officer, I’ve got to tell you, there’s nothing that points to a kidnapping. Nothing.”

I sat there and looked at him.

“Okay,” Dutton said, “what is it you expect me to do?”

“Look for her.”

“I’ve been looking for her since yesterday afternoon,” the chief countered. “I’ve sent out bulletins to other police departments. I’ve gotten photographs of her distributed to every cop in town and to the Middlesex County prosecutor’s office and the state police. I’ve questioned everyone who saw her the day before she vanished. What else am I supposed to do?”

“Find her,” I suggested.

“I know this is hard for you, Elliot. Believe me, I do. But everything that can be done is being done, and you’re just going to have to be patient until such time as something resembling a lead presents itself. That’s just how investigations work.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” I asked. “Pretend everything is normal while the clock keeps ticking? You and I both know that the first forty-eight hours are critical in . . . these cases. And a good half of that time is already shot. Tell me what I can do.”

Dutton put his right hand to his nose, which I’d noticed in the past was something he did when he didn’t have a satisfactory answer. “You can go home and go to bed, Elliot. I’ll drive you.”

“I’ll never get to sleep.”

Dutton stood up and reached for his coat. “Take a sleeping pill.”

“I can’t. My doctor is missing.”

 

 

 

 

AS
I expected, sleeping was pretty much impossible. The truth was, I did have some sleeping pills in the house, but I didn’t take them in case the phone were to ring. I doubt my mind would have shut up long enough to allow for rest, anyway. I didn’t toss and turn, since I have no idea how to toss anything but a baseball, but as the sun came up I sure did lie in bed and watch the ceiling fan, which was turned off and in desperate need of a cleaning.

My father called at seven. “Have you heard anything yet?”

“No, Dad. It’s seven o’clock in the morning.”

“Yeah, and you don’t sound like I woke you up.” My father has a rather eerie ability to see into my mind. He’s like my own personal Amazing Kreskin.

“Okay, so I’m worried. Don’t tell Mom.”

“I know you’re not worried.” My mother must have been in the room. “Just let us know when you hear from her.”

“You sure you don’t want to ask your other son, Gregory?” Never let it be said I can’t be as petty as the next man if I set my mind to it.

“It’s just cards, for goodness sake, Elliot. You could come, if you knew how to play pinochle.”

I tried to banish the image of myself, Dad, and Gregory sitting around a card table, and moved on. “I haven’t heard from the plumber yet,” I told him. “Care to give me a guess on how long I’ll have to keep the theatre closed?”

Dad thought about that, which was good. It didn’t really matter what his estimate would be, but it was a good way to get him onto a new subject, and away from Gregory, at least mentally.

“I’d guess a couple of days,” he said. “It depends on how far down the rust goes in your pipes.”

“The way my week is going,” I told him, “I’d expect it goes down to the shopping center of Earth’s molten core.”

“Don’t be negative, Elliot,” Dad said. “Let me know when the plumber calls. I’ll come up to supervise.”

“You don’t have to . . .”

“Yes, I do.”

After we hung up, I checked the clock. Another five minutes had gone by, and nobody had found Sharon yet. I couldn’t do much until nine, when offices opened. But there was someone I could call who would undoubtedly be awake and attentive this time of the morning.

“Homicide. Sergeant Vidal.”

“Hi, Meg. It’s Elliot Freed.”

“It’s only been two months since I’ve heard from you, Elliot,” Meg said. “Are you forming an unhealthy attachment to me?”

I wasn’t in the mood to banter. “Meg, Sharon’s missing.”

Her tone became professional and concerned. “Since when?” She was probably already taking notes.

“Night before last.” I gave her all the details I knew.

Meg sighed a little, thinking. “Okay, consider carefully, Elliot. Is there any reason other than what happened to this Chapman guy that Sharon might be a target? Anybody mad at her, anybody with a strange infatuation, anything like that?”

“Nobody besides me, and I didn’t take her.”

“Sit tight. Let Chief Dutton do his job. He’s good.”

A sound came out of my throat that resembled pain and impatience. I’d never heard it before. “I know he’s good, Meg. But I can’t just sit here and wait. I’ve got to do
something
.”

“I’m on my way up, Elliot.”

That threw me. I hadn’t actually seen Meg Vidal since I was doing research for
Woman at Risk
, which meant I hadn’t been in the same room with her in a good number of years.

“You’re coming up? Is there something you can do?”

“Yes. I can sit and wait with you.”

“Meg . . .”

Her tone allowed for no argument. “I wasn’t asking, Elliot.”

“Do you even know how to get here?”

“I’m with the cops, Elliot. We have GPS now.”

There could be no dissuading her. I gave Meg my address, and she promised to be in a car on her way from Camden as soon as possible, which would put her here in about an hour and a half. I had no idea how she’d clear it with her department, but she didn’t sound like she cared.