The Yellow Packard (18 page)

“You want to know the rest?” Reese asked from his desk.

She didn’t turn around as she spoke. “Go ahead.”

“A fisherman found the body along the bank where a creek feeds into the Wabash. The girl was blond, had shoulder-length hair, small features, and fair skin. The shoe size and height match Rose Hall. She’d been in the water too long for a facial identification.”

“Where is she?” Meeker’s tone was stoic.

“Indy,” he replied. “They are doing an autopsy right now.”

“Do they have our records?” she asked, still looking out the window. “Have they seen our files?”

“Yeah,” he assured her.

Meeker turned back to her partner. As she spoke, her arms remained folded. “This officially adds another charge to our case. Murder rides along with all the other occupants that Packard has been carrying. That means we might be able to get a few more G-men on the case.”

“Not the way I wanted to secure more resources,” he answered. “Who is going to tell the Halls?”

“I’ll do it.” She sighed. “It might be easier coming from a woman. And even if we don’t have an official confirmation, they need to be told we have found a body that could be the girl’s. Odds are that news is already on the radio in Indiana. It won’t take long to get here.”

She walked resolutely back to her desk, sat in her chair, and picked up the phone. Before dialing, she looked again at the photo of Rose Hall that she had sitting on the corner of her desk. What a beautiful child she had been.

“How do you think they’ll take it?” Reese asked.

She glanced across the room. From the despair in his eyes, someone who didn’t know the situation would have guessed the rugged agent to be the mourning father.

“You’re not as tough as Hoover thinks,” she noted.

“No,” he admitted.

“Henry,” she said, “it will crush them. But it is better to know your daughter is dead, to have the actual proof, than go through life without that knowledge. As cold as it sounds something good might come out of this. They’ll have a funeral. They will be able to mourn. There will be an ending.”

“And that’s good?” he asked.

“It’s better than never knowing,” she offered.

She once more looked at the phone before setting the receiver back in the cradle. She glanced across to the man and shrugged. “Does the press know about the body being found?”

“I can ask for a press blackout,” he replied. “Last I heard the newspaper doesn’t know about it.”

“Make the call and keep it quiet,” she quickly shot back. “Then I won’t have to make that call until we ID the body.”

“It might be a while,” he told her.

“The news needs to be concrete,” she said. Meeker picked up the newspaper she’d bought that morning but had not yet read. After taking a long draw of her Coke, she turned to the funny pages. Though she needed a laugh, she doubted the
Tribune
could make that delivery after her morning.

An hour later, after reading everything including the want ads twice, she set the paper down and watched as her partner answered the ringing phone. After his hello, he nodded in her direction. She knew this would be the confirmation they needed.

“I see,” Reese said. “And what else do you have?”

He waited for another sixty seconds. As he did Meeker opened her case file and pulled out the number to Carole’s Flower Shop.

“Got it,” the man said from his desk on the other side of the twenty-by-fifteen-foot room. “Thanks.”

Setting the phone down, he looked over at Meeker and grimly smiled. “It’s not her.” He paused as the full realization of what it meant set in. “It was a four-year-old girl from Newport. She and her father had not been seen since earlier in the month. He was out of work and his wife had left them, so locals just thought they’d moved away. Guess they hadn’t. They found his body about an hour ago not far from the spot where they found hers.”

Meeker shook her head. “You mean he was so overwhelmed that he killed his daughter and took his own life?” The thought was simply too much for her to comprehend.

“No,” Reese assured her, “seems it was just a tragic accident. They were out fishing….”

Chapter 32

May 1, 1940

S
o you still don’t know a blasted thing?” George shouted while pounding his fist into the counter as rage and frustration shaded his face crimson.

Helen Meeker stood in Carole’s Flower Shop, as the father’s words tore through her like a sharp knife. For a month she had worked every angle on the case, and she had nothing to show for it. During that time she had avoided admitting that fact or the lack of new evidence to Rose Hall’s parents. But the time had come to level with them that the FBI, with all its investigators and resources, had hit a dead end. The parents had a right to know that.

“I’m sorry,” Meeker replied, her carefully measured tone indicating the sincerity of her message. “I want you to know this is the most important case in the world to me. I really mean that.”

“But it must not be too important for the FBI,” George shot back.

Carole, who’d had been listlessly working on a flower display, cut her husband off, “George, bite your tongue.”

“I’m tired of staying quiet,” he screamed. “These people are supposed to find our baby, and what have they done? Nothing!” Rushing from behind the counter to where the agent stood, he wagged an accusing finger in the visitor’s face and went on, “If the FBI really cared, they wouldn’t have assigned a woman to the case. The fact that we got you rather than a man pretty much proves Rose didn’t matter to them!”

The words stung, but she’d gotten that reaction on many of the cases she’d been assigned. She had grown very used to the comment. “We must not be important because a woman is on the job.”

“George didn’t mean it,” Carole said, as she crossed the room to where the man and agent stood nose to nose. “It’s just the pressure. It’s just that you can’t tell us anything. We need some answers. We need some hope.”

Stepping back from the man’s accusing finger, Meeker walked over and put her hand on the hurting mother’s shoulder. “You need a lot more than answers, you need to have your little girl back. Bringing her back to you has filled my every waking hour and my sleepless nights.”

Moving back eye-to-eye with Rose’s father, she added, “And you’re right, there is a woman on this case. I’m here for a reason, and it’s not because the FBI doesn’t care. Mr. Hoover checks with me several times a week on this specific matter. He knows your daughter’s name and asks about her each time he calls. Right now we have a dozen agents all across the country following even the most obscure leads. I can’t begin to tell you the money and man-hours that have been expended on this case. And the reason it remains open and the reason we are working so hard is that there is a woman assigned to it. I won’t let them give up. I won’t let them turn their back on your little girl.”

George’s eyes dropped to the floor, and his hands pushed into his pants pockets. He was a defeated soul.

“Listen, Mr. Hall,” she solemnly said, “I have studied kidnapping cases more than anyone else at the FBI. I know them inside out. I know the reason kids are taken, and I know the odds of solving these cases. I know what has worked to nab suspects and put them behind bars. I know the proven steps needed to get a child back alive. I know more about that than Hoover himself. This is my life’s work, so you have the best person for this case in front of you right now!”

Meeker’s eyes darted from George to Carole and then to the front glass. She took in the placid street scene for a second before shrugging her shoulders and walking over to the counter to pick up her purse and resolutely moving toward the door. As she grabbed the knob, she looked back at the Halls. “I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe it, and I understand that you’re angry and frustrated, but having a woman on this case is not the problem. If there is any way in the world to bring Rose home to you, I will or I will die trying.”

The Halls might have said something, but if they did, the agent didn’t hear it because she was already out the door. Sliding into her car, she hit the starter and pointed the Ford’s hood toward Chicago.

Chapter 33

M
eeker pushed her hair off her forehead and leaned against the desk she was using at FBI’s Chicago office. As her legs pushed into the piece of furniture, she glanced across the room where her gaze fell on Henry Reese. As she was hitting nothing but dead ends, she hoped he was doing better. “What about Mr. Cason? Did you find him?”

“Yes and no,” her partner explained. “I know where he is, but I can’t get to him. He’s on a ship bound for the Philippines. He won’t be back in the States for six months.”

“You’re not giving me the news I want to hear, Henry. How about the car? Any leads on finding it?”

“We’ve got the cops in Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, and Illinois looking for it, but nothing has turned up. For the last month we’ve had local radio stations all over the area putting out bulletins asking people for help, and there’s hasn’t been a single call. The car has simply disappeared.”

She rubbed her forehead as she asked, “Do you think it’s in a river someplace?”

“Maybe.” He sighed. “Or perhaps chopped up for parts.” He shook his head. “You’ve been out of the office. What have you been up to? You find anything?”

“I was with the parents yesterday,” Meeker explained. “They’re in bad shape. George has lost at least twenty pounds, and Carole looks like the walking dead. They aren’t handling this well at all. But what can you expect? We have to give them something to hold on to. We have to give them some kind of hope!”

“Yeah,” he said, “but we can’t make up lies. That would be even worse than telling them nothing. And you know as well as I do what has likely happened.”

She knew. Most kidnapped children were killed within three days of their abduction. A few survived as long as a week, and it’d been a month.

“So,” he asked, “did you level with the Halls about the odds of us ever finding their child alive?”

She glanced over to her partner and shook her head. “Would you have?”

“No, but the fact is we aren’t going to find that kid. At some point they’re going to have to face that fact.”

“They won’t have to be told,” Meeker explained, “it will hit them like a ton of bricks when Rose’s birthday rolls around. And at Christmas, they’ll realize it then, too. For them, there won’t be any light days or easy laughs, not for a long time. Maybe never.”

Her words hung in the air like the smell coming from the stockyards. Neither of the agents could escape it. It filled their senses making them feel helpless and sick.

“You need to get away from this case,” Reese suggested.

Pulling herself off her chair, she walked over to the window. Below her, just like it had been every day for the past month, was Chicago. Maybe Rose was down there.

“What are we missing?” Meeker asked.

“I can’t think of anything,” Reese answered.

“Do you think this was pulled off by just one person?” she asked, folding her arms over her blue suit as she turned back to face her partner.

“My gut feeling?” he asked as he raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah, what does your gut say?”

“No,” the man answered. “It would have to be two people to make it work this smoothly. One to get the girl and hold her, the other to watch the family.”

“And to know about those ten one-hundred-dollar bills,” Meeker added, “at least one of those involved has to be from Oakwood.”

Moving quickly to her desk, she picked up the phone and dialed seven numbers.

“Meeker here! Get me a list of all those who bought flowers or anything else from the family’s flower shop the week before Rose Hall was kidnapped. Interview Mrs. Hall and try to get her to recall every person who came into her shop. And get a complete list of anyone who might have known where the family got the money for the down payment. I want to grill that list like they’re associates of Al Capone.”

“We’ve already done that a couple of times,” her partner noted.

She put the phone down and looked back at Reese. “And we need to do it again. And, Henry, we have to find that car!”

Chapter 34

A
t Bynum Aluminum, Bill Landers had gone from goat to king in a matter of a week. The company plant and offices were alive with activity thanks to three new large accounts the salesman had landed. With a huge bonus in the bank and a raise in salary, Landers was awash in cash for the first time in his life. He was also off the road for a while, too. Until the company could hire another full shift of workers, Bynum couldn’t handle any other new contracts.

It was almost six on a busy Friday night when Landers walked into Doris’s Café. The staff knew him well. At least three times a week he grabbed a meal at the counter. To honor their most loyal customer, Doris Sinks had even had his name painted on one of the counter’s stools.

Easing down in his centrally located spot, Landers looked across the counter to a new face. She wasn’t movie-star beautiful, but there was a kind of fresh cuteness about the dark-eyed brunette that he rarely saw in a woman approaching forty. She had a few wrinkles around her eyes and a softness at her chin, but it just served to add to her wholesome mystique.

“You must be Bill,” she announced as she approached him. “Doris has told me all about you.”

He’d never been good around women. He’d always stumbled on his words when trying to talk to them. His mother said he’d grow out of his shyness, but he never did. The woman he married, Betty Scroggins, had trapped him. She was pushy, six feet tall, and had the arms of a lumberjack. She’d asked him out on his twenty-first birthday, from their first date she had controlled everything and, simply because she’d told him, they’d married two months later. It lasted a year until she found someone older who could provide her with a lot more than Landers could. So at twenty-two he found himself divorced. Since that time he could count on one hand the number of women he’d taken out.