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By Root 336 0

of phone calls, all of which were taped, the callers’s voices heard through the recorders, the answering machine delivering Rollins’s outgoing message. No calls were answered directly, per orders from Kloss. Many were from the press. Soon, vehicles from the city’s media outlets arrived and parked outside, their reporters and crews ready to spring at anyone coming through the Rollinses’ door. Kloss called in for uniformed officers to keep them at bay. Kloss’s cell phone was busy, too, including a succession of calls from Chief Carter informing him that until the Rollins kidnapping was resolved, it took top priority over any and every other pending case.

“So, what do we do now?” Rollins asked Kloss after they’d settled again at the table, and a fresh supply of coffee had been brewed.

“We wait,” Kloss said. “The chief has every spare cop out looking for your daughter. They’ll have her picture. They’ll do their job, Mr. Rollins. In the meantime, we learn to sit tight.”

TWENTY-FOUR

Walt Hatcher learned of Samantha Rollins’s abduction from Mae. Rearranging the garage had tired him, and he’d fallen asleep on a chaise lounge on their patio.

She came from the kitchen, where she’d been watching TV while seasoning chicken for dinner. He opened his eyes at the sound of her. “Walter,” she said, “there’s been a kidnapping at the Mall. That lawyer, Rollins, the one who works with Colgate and his campaign. His daughter. Seven years old. It’s on the television.”

He lowered his feet to the floor and shook his head. “Kidnapping?”

“Yes. Come in and watch. It’s all over the news.”

He followed her to the kitchen where an anchor on a local channel brought viewers up to date.

“…and according to Chief of Detectives Willis Carter, a massive search has been launched, using all available manpower. The victim, seven-year-old Samantha Rollins, is the daughter of prominent D.C. attorney Jerrold Rollins, a close advisor and confidant to presidential candidate Robert Colgate. Calls to the Rollins home have not been returned. More on this breaking story.”

He lumbered from the kitchen to the stairs, pulling his belt tight.

“Where are you going?” Mae called after him.

“Work. Nobody called me.”

“Maybe they—”

His broad back disappeared into the upstairs hall. Ten minutes later he returned, dressed in a suit, a muted two-tone tan dress shirt that didn’t match the gray suit, and red tie. He’d never been known as a fashion plate. “I probably won’t get back tonight,” he told Mae on his way out the door. “I’ll call.”

She returned to the kitchen and wrapped up the night’s dinner fixings to go in the fridge. A TV dinner would do that night.

Hatcher went directly upstairs at Metro and was told that Chief Carter was out. He stepped into the street to dial Jackson’s cell, but a half-dozen reporters and a TV crew scotched that plan. Back inside, he found a quiet corner of the main booking room and made the call.

“Jackson.”

“Jackson, Hatcher. Where are you?”

“I’m, ah—Mary and I are with the parents.”

“Why are you with them?”

“Detective Kloss brought us. Look, I can’t talk, Hatch. Can I call you later?”

“You can’t talk? What the hell do you mean by that? Get your ass down here to Metro.”

Hatcher heard a male voice in the background bark, “Can the call, Matt.”

The line went dead.

Hatcher swore under his breath and retreated to the locker room, where he splashed tepid water on his face and looked at himself in the old metal mirror, wishing he’d shaved before leaving the house. He sat on a wooden bench and tried to wedge clear thinking into his congested brain. What the hell was Kloss thinking, taking from him his two juniors? It wasn’t done that way. You didn’t go around raiding other detectives’ squads. The department had been going downhill every year, as far as Hatch was concerned, a bunch of pols running things, turning things upside down and making it tough to do your job—to be a cop—to rid the streets of the lice that come out of their nests at night.

A detective came into the room. “Hey, Hatch, you okay?” he asked.

Hatch, who’d been