Murder Inside the Beltway - Margaret Truman [72]
She went to the kitchen, where Paul had put on coffee. “Sweet kid,” she said.
• • •
The idyllic Saturday at D.C.’s famed Mall was now chaotic. A half-dozen marked police cruisers, lights flashing, radios blaring, had shut down Independence Avenue where the abduction had taken place. A legion of uniformed cops created a wide circle around Jerry and Sue Rollins, who stood by their Volvo, their faces testifying to the trauma they were experiencing. Other MPD vehicles continued to arrive, their plainclothes occupants spilling from them. Matt Jackson and Mary Hall also showed up. They’d been contacted at the museum on Matt’s cell phone and took off at a run.
“She’s gone,” Sue said to anyone and everyone close enough to hear. “My God, somebody has taken my baby!”
A tall, lean detective dressed in jeans, a tan safari jacket, and sneakers established himself as the person to whom Jerry and Sue Rollins should direct their comments. “I’m Detective Kloss,” he said. “You’re the parents?”
“Yes,” Jerry replied. “I’m Jerry Rollins. My wife, Sue.”
No handshakes were exchanged. The detective recognized Rollins as being part of the Robert Colgate campaign, which told him this would be more than a simple child abduction, if ever there could be such a thing.
“Give it to me fast, Mr. Rollins,” Kloss said. “From the top.”
Rollins tried to pace his retelling of events, but the words tumbled out as though every second counted, which it did.
“…afternoon on the Mall… getting ready to go home… stopped to talk with friends, gave the keys to Samantha… that’s our daughter… she’s seven… we left our friends and Samantha was gone.… Gone!… It all happened in a second.”
“Are you sure she didn’t run off somewhere, Mr. Rollins?” Kloss asked. “I have a kid that age and—”
“No, of course not,” Rollins snapped. “She wouldn’t do that.” He extended his hand in which he held the car keys. “These were over there,” he said, pointing to where he’d found them on the ground.
Kloss turned to the crowd, which was by now substantial—men, women, and children, teenagers and young couples, tourists with funny hats and T-shirts, some capturing the scene on their video and still cameras. “Anybody see anything?” he barked.
Some shouted comments based upon what they’d heard had happened. There were no eyewitnesses. A ruddy-faced man said loudly, “Let’s go looking for the kid. Come on, she’s got to be around here somewhere.”
Kloss took a description of Samantha and the clothes she was wearing, and instructed officers to isolate the area around the car with crime scene tape, and to post guards to keep it from being violated. He dispatched other officers to begin a search of the Mall, and called for backups, including the Park Police. He suggested to the Rollinses that they get in his car, away from the madness. Sue balked: “I have to find her,” she said, turning toward the crowd. But her husband grabbed her arm. “No, Sue,” he said. “Let’s do what he says.”
As they pushed through a knot of gawkers, Rollins heard a woman say, “People should keep their eyes on their kids.”
He spun around to say something, but didn’t.
When they reached Kloss’s unmarked vehicle, the detective spotted Jackson and Hall interviewing bystanders. He told the Rollinses to get in, and went to the two young detectives. “Hey, Matt, you heard?”
“Yeah. I got a call. We were here at the Mall and—”
“I can use you two,” Kloss said. “Stay close.”
When Jackson had been promoted to detective, he’d initially been assigned to Kloss’s squad. Kloss was a skilled hostage negotiator who’d worked a number of difficult cases, and had been lead on a kidnapping in Southwest only three months earlier that had turned out badly. A four-year-old boy had been abducted by a recently released sexual predator and murdered.
Jackson liked and respected Kloss, a soft-spoken man with a hint of a southern accent and a reasoned view of things, professional and personal. The senior detective had been high on Jackson, too, and welcomed having him assigned to his unit. But a month later, another of what