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Chapter 8

8

Thursday, December 19, 1946

2:01 A.m.

Lane Walker was frantic. The house was empty, there was no obvious clue as to who had been using it, and he had no idea what kind of car the mystery man was driving when he spirited Tiffany away. Worse yet, he didn’t know where the gunman had taken the reporter. Thus, the cop was completely lost.

Walking over to the phone, he picked up the receiver and dialed four numbers before shaking his head and hanging up. What good would it do to put out an alarm when he had only a vague description of the man and no guess as to where he’d taken the reporter? Besides, the last thing he wanted to admit was that he’d been so stupid. After all, this guy had anticipated every move the cop had planned. In fact, his opponent had won the game in one move and kidnapped The Chicago Star’s top reporter. The chief was going to eat Lane alive when he found out.

Flipping on all the lights, the detective began to search and then re-search the house room by room. Except for the furniture, there was nothing in the place. There were no clothes in the closets, no dirty dishes, the trash cans were empty, and nothing was written on notepads. There wasn’t even a toothbrush or a bar of soap in the bathroom.

Frustrated, Lane hurried next door and pounded on the door to find out what the neighbors knew. A man in his forties was not pleased about having a person, even one with a badge, rouse him from bed in the middle of the night. Neither were the folks in the other homes on the street. Worse yet, no one had ever seen the big man. About all they could tell the cop was that Olivia Allbright, an elderly widow, had lived in the small house at 1014 Elmwood until three months ago when she’d died. After her children removed her personal belongings, a real estate company finished cleaning the place and was now getting ready to sell it. As it was fully furnished, the company expected it to move quickly.

With no concrete information to work with, Lane returned to the house, picked up the phone, and began digging into what little he had gleaned from his nocturnal wanderings. A series of calls finally put the cop in touch with a real estate agent who knew something about the house. James Cantrell informed the policeman that the property had not been leased, that he’d never met the man Lane described, and that his company would not officially put a “For Sale” sign in the yard until after Christmas. The call ended with the angry real estate agent shooting out a number of off-color descriptions of policemen that made even Lane blush. After setting the phone back down on the receiver, the exasperated cop came to the conclusion that the home had been chosen for only one reason: it was empty and furnished. Thus, the man had simply picked the lock or found an open window, waited for Lane and Tiffany to arrive, and after he had gotten his hands on the money and the woman, he’d likely driven to his real residence. But where was that?

The clock was ticking and if Lane couldn’t find out who the man was perhaps it was time to figure out why the big guy wanted both the cash and the blonde. Perhaps the papers in the files would give him a lead. Hurrying out into the snow, Lane raced the two blocks to his car, hopped in, started the engine, popped on the dome light, and opened the top file. It was filled with nothing but blank paper. Frantically he grabbed the next two and was horrified to discover nothing but three hundred more sheets of white typing paper. Elrod had evidently been conned and that made Lane look like an even bigger fool. Tossing the file onto the seat, the detective tried to come up with a new plan, but as he caught a glimpse of himself in the car’s rearview mirror, he was taken back to a bit of advice from his youth. If only he’d just thought of it earlier he might not be in this fix.

His father had once told him knee-jerk reactions usually leave a person trying to justify their actions while standing on one leg. Now if things kept going as they were, he soon wouldn’t even have that leg to stand on. Why had he blindly rushed into this situation, and even worse, why had he brought Tiffany with him?

Shoving the car into gear, an angry Lane aimed the Ford back toward the district attorney’s house. Perhaps the only way to find out what had happened to Tiffany was to search Elrod’s personal files and see if he could figure out who the real blonde was. If he couldn’t get a handle on that, then the odds against finding Tiffany were likely very long. As he slid along the slick streets, as one mile became two and two, three, his overriding fear was that his stupidity and haste had signed a death warrant for the woman he might care about much more than he was willing to admit. The more he considered that possibility, the more he wanted to scream.