Abduction! (8 page)

“I’ve decided to name him Monty,” Ruth said. “We’ll need to stop on the way home to buy a collar and some dog food. I think we still have Max’s ball.”

“It’s been a while since we had a dog to walk,” Fred said. “Remember how Max always woke us up early?”

“It’ll be good for us to have a dog again. We’ll go out for walks every day whether we feel like it or not. Monty will keep us limber. The best arthritis medicine in the world is a dog.”

Fred smiled at his wife. “Rescuing a dog sure beats sitting around getting bored with ourselves,” he said.

“You bet it does.”

It was nearly six-thirty by the time they arrived home with their purchases. Ruth folded an old blue blanket for a dog bed. Fred filled a cereal bowl with dog food and another with water. Monty slurped the water enthusiastically, spilling some on the floor.

“Do you want to sit and watch the local news?” Fred asked as Monty sniffed all around the house.

“No,” Ruth said. “I’m going to heat up some soup for us, and then I want to walk Monty around the outside of our house before it gets dark. If he ever got out by mistake, I want to be sure he knows which house is his.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Fred said. “There’s never any
good news anyway. It’s always murder and arson and missing children.”

“Then why do you watch?”

“Maybe I won’t anymore. Maybe I’ll walk Monty before dinner every night.”

“The good news today,” Ruth said, “is that we got a dog!”

T
he search teams came up empty. No one living around the school had seen Matt or the person who took him. No one had noticed a vehicle parked at the curb where Spike kept stopping.

After an hour of knocking on doors, Mrs. Tagg said, “I think I should drive you home, Bonnie. Your mother will worry if we stay longer.”

Bonnie didn’t want to quit, but she knew Nancy’s mom was right.

When they got to Bonnie’s street, Mrs. Tagg couldn’t find a place to park. Television crews clogged the front yard; a news helicopter circled overhead. A spokesman from the police department was trying to create order out of the chaos.

“You can drive up the alley,” Bonnie said, “and drop me off by our back gate.”

“I had planned to come in,” Mrs. Tagg said, “but it’s clear your mother doesn’t need any more visitors.”

Bonnie and her mom, along with Officer Calvin, were interviewed by reporters from two newspapers and three television stations. Bonnie found it hard to talk about Matt and Pookie without crying. It was especially difficult when a reporter asked, “Do you think your brother ran away?”

“No!” Bonnie said.

“Maybe he ran off and took the dog with him,” the reporter said. “The largest percentage of missing kids are runaways.”

Bonnie wanted to scream, “He didn’t run away! Quit saying that!” But she knew media help was important, so she tried hard to be pleasant. “He had no reason to run away,” Bonnie said. “Matt was happy at home.”

“Matt was abducted from his school,” Mrs. Sholter said. “Less than fifteen minutes elapsed between when his teacher saw him and when Bonnie reported him missing.”

“A police dog picked up Matt’s scent in the doorway of the school,” Officer Calvin said, “and followed it across the playground to the street. It stopped there, indicating Matt got in a vehicle at that point.”

This silenced the reporter with the runaway theory, but it gave Bonnie chills to think of Matt crossing the playground and climbing into a car. She found it hard to believe he would have done such a thing after Mom had warned both of them repeatedly not to ever go anywhere with someone they didn’t know. Yet that must be what he had done.

When all the reporters and photographers finally left, Bonnie felt as if she’d run a twenty-mile marathon. The phone rang often as the word spread among their friends. Each time, she answered quickly, hoping it might be Matt.

At eleven p.m. Bonnie and her mom sat together and watched themselves on the Channel Seven news.

Mr. Quinn and Mrs. Jules appeared briefly on the newscast. They said Matt was a good student; everyone liked him. Matt’s friend Stanley, looking scared, told how he and Matt had played on the monkey bars during recess.

The screen showed a highway reader board on Interstate 90, with Matt’s description in bright lights. The announcer explained the Amber Alert and urged viewers to call 911 if they thought they saw Matt.

The story moved to Jefferson School, where nearly a hundred volunteers still searched the neighborhood
for any clues. One man, who said he didn’t know Matt, explained why he was there.

“I have a little boy myself,” he said, “and I know how I’d feel if somebody took him. I’m here because I want to help.”

Then the camera focused on Bonnie and her mom.

Bonnie felt as if she were viewing a movie, watching an actress who looked like her. The look-alike girl talked about her brother and her missing dog. She held up a picture of Pookie while her mom held one of Matt. Mrs. Sholter begged whoever had taken her son to return him unharmed.

“Please bring my dog home, too,” the TV Bonnie said, her voice ending in a high squeak as she fought back tears.

The camera zoomed in on the picture of Matt.

“Anyone with information about the missing boy or his dog is urged to call nine-one-one or local police.” A number flashed on the screen, followed by a commercial.

After her mom turned off the TV, Bonnie felt numb. She wanted this nightmare to be over.

The police had set up a special telephone system so any calls coming in to the Sholters’ number would be monitored by the police. “You may get a ransom demand,” Detective Morrison said.

“Ransom!” Mrs. Sholter waved her hand around the modest living room with its worn furniture. “Why would anyone think I can afford to pay a ransom?”

“People who abduct children aren’t the great brains of the world,” Detective Morrison said. “Clear thinking is not required in order to commit a crime.”

The night dragged on. A police car remained parked in the Sholters’ driveway. Using their computer, Bonnie and her mom made posters with Matt’s picture on them.
MATT IS MISSING
the posters said.

Mrs. Jules had called earlier to say all the teachers would go out at daylight the next morning to hang posters around town.

“Don’t use your own phone number,” Detective Morrison had said. “Use the police number, so you don’t get any calls from wackos.”

“Wackos?” Bonnie said.

“People who call, even though they haven’t seen the missing child.”

“If they haven’t seen him, why would they call?” Bonnie asked. “What would they say?”

“Oh, happy things like ‘If you watched your child properly this wouldn’t have happened.’ One woman used to call every time a child disappeared and claim she’d seen the child’s body floating in Lake Washington.”

“Gross!”

“People can be cruel. Use my number. Better yet, use the toll-free hotline for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Someone’s there to answer the phone twenty-four/seven so you’ll be sure not to miss an important call. They know exactly what questions to ask.” She had written the number and handed it to Bonnie.

“Are you sure the center knows about Matt?”

“We gave them all the information this afternoon. His picture’s already on their Web site. We’ve also asked for help from the Washington State Patrol’s Missing and Exploited Children’s Task Force.”

Bonnie added information about Pookie to each poster. Knowing other people were trying to find Matt made his return seem possible.

At midnight, Bonnie’s mom insisted she lie down for a while. Bonnie knew it was pointless to go to bed; she’d never fall asleep, but she lay on top of her bed in the dark, listening for the phone as tears trickled into her ears.

At six the next morning, Mrs. Jules and Mrs. Payton came to get the posters. “Every teacher at Matt’s school and yours, Bonnie, will distribute these,” Mrs. Jules said. “There are dozens of other volunteers, as well. We’ll make more copies as we need them.”

It helps, Bonnie thought, to know the teachers are giving up their Saturday for this.

“We plan to blanket the entire Puget Sound area with posters,” Mrs. Payton said.

Mrs. Jules left her cell-phone number. “Call as soon as he’s found,” she said.

At seven, someone else knocked on the door. Hope surging, Bonnie ran to open it. Mrs. Watson stood on the step holding a pan of warm cinnamon rolls.

Mrs. Watson’s curls had a bluish tinge and she always smelled faintly of lilacs. Three years ago when Mrs. Watson turned eighty, she announced she would count backward on future birthdays. Now if anyone asked her age, she said, “Seventy-seven.”

“I thought you might need some breakfast,” Mrs. Watson said.

“Come in, Mrs. Watson,” Bonnie said.

“Is there any word about Matt?”

“No.”

Bonnie had eaten nothing the night before; the fragrant rolls smelled delicious. Although cinnamon rolls were her favorite treat, especially Mrs. Watson’s homemade cinnamon rolls, she felt guilty for wanting one. How could she think about food when her brother and her dog were missing?

“You have to eat,” Mrs. Watson said, “to keep up your own
strength. You won’t be any help to the police otherwise.”

Mrs. Sholter poured two cups of coffee and invited Mrs. Watson to stay. Bonnie got herself a glass of orange juice to go with her roll. The prism in the window sent rainbows dancing across the tile floor. Maybe that’s a good omen, Bonnie thought. Rainbows are a sign of hope. On the other hand, she’d seen rainbows yesterday morning, too, and look what had happened.

“I saw on the news that Pookie’s gone, too,” Mrs. Watson said.

“The police think someone might have taken Pookie first and then used him to entice Matt to go with them.”

“That gives me the all-over shivers,” Mrs. Watson said. “It means the person who took Matt came here, too.”

Bonnie knew Mrs. Watson was upset in part because she lived so close.

“I wish I’d stayed home yesterday, instead of going to my book club,” Mrs. Watson said. “I might have seen or heard something. Maybe Pookie barked.”

After Bonnie finished eating, she said, “I’m going to look around outside some more.”

Every inch of the yard had been examined the day
before, but she was too antsy to sit still. As she crossed the yard, she looked at the polka-dot garage door. I’d give anything, she thought, to hear a tennis ball hitting the door again.

She went out the back gate then walked up the alley to the corner. When she returned, she spied something red deep in the weeds next to the fence.

When she pushed the tall weeds back, she saw Pookie’s collar. She reached for it, then withdrew her hand. The police might find fingerprints on the collar.

Bonnie raced inside. “I found Pookie’s collar!” she said. “It’s in the weeds out in the alley.”

Mrs. Sholter quickly called Officer Calvin. “Don’t pick it up,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”

Bonnie returned to the alley. She wanted to be sure nobody else found the collar and took it. Officer Calvin arrived soon and, wearing gloves, carefully picked up the collar and dropped it in an evidence bag.

“So whoever took Pookie went out the back gate,” Bonnie said. “They must have parked in the alley and thrown his collar away so he couldn’t be identified by our phone number.”

“That’s as good a theory as any,” Officer Calvin said.

“Pookie was probably out in the yard,” Mrs. Sholter said, “which explains why nobody broke into
the house. Pookie used his doggie door, then the man opened the gate and took Pookie.”

Bonnie imagined the scene. Dear old Pookie, plodding outside to do his business, then falling asleep in the sunshine. When the man entered the yard, Pookie probably licked his hand.

“Of course we don’t know it was a man,” Officer Calvin said. “A woman might have taken Pookie.”

Bonnie wondered if a woman might have taken Matt. She knew sometimes women who can’t have a baby freak out and steal someone else’s baby, but she didn’t think they stole six-year-old boys.

Officer Calvin had brought a computer-generated image of the man who had come to the school, pretending to work for UPS. “The secretary gave a detailed description,” he said, “especially of his hair, mustache, and tattoo.”

Bonnie stared at the drawing, examining the man’s eyes and his curly dark hair. She had never felt hatred toward anyone, but as she looked at the drawing she felt such intense dislike for the man that her feelings shocked her.

Mrs. Sholter glanced at the drawing, then covered her face with her hands and turned away, as if she couldn’t bear to look.

“Do either of you recognize him?” Officer Calvin asked.

“No.” Bonnie and her mom spoke at the same time.

“This image went out last night via e-mail and broadcast faxing,” Officer Calvin said. “It’s now in the hands of law-enforcement agencies all across the country. The school secretary says it’s a good likeness, and the rose tattoo is an excellent clue because it’s specific. People notice such things and remember them. Of course we don’t know for certain the UPS impostor took Matt.”

Officer Calvin doubts everything, Bonnie thought, even the obvious facts. She supposed it was good the police considered all possibilities, but only one scenario made sense: a man dressed as a UPS delivery man stole Pookie, drove to the school, and talked Matt into going somewhere with him. Who had done it? Why? Where were Pookie and Matt now?