He was breathing hard, and his wife was sobbing openly, her head on his chest. The camera pulled back and the lighting changed, leaving the Raglans silhouetted in black against a white background.
Larry Brenner’s voice dominated the scene, “Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Raglan. Parents of Debbie Raglan, fifteen years old, kidnapped Tuesday evening while babysitting.”
The camera cut to Brenner’s face. His eyes flicked to one side and he frowned, then reached out to accept a slip of paper from an unseen hand. There was a moment of effective silence before he spoke again, rapidly and excitedly.
“We just had a telephone call pledging a cheque for one hundred dollars.”
Brenner’s voice faltered. “Chief Raglan, I’m sorry I couldn’t be the first, but I’ll match that hundred right now. We’ve only got a minute and I don’t know much about setting up fund-raising campaigns, but I’m sure there are many people in our audience tonight who will give what they can.”
They called it the DEBBIE FUND and a hastily scrawled placard bearing the station’s address filled the screen for Brenner’s remaining minute.
I switched the TV off and thought about the story I’d done for tomorrow’s Bulletin, which was already on the streets. The human slant. A word-picture of a girl as she really was — or as close to it as I could find out. An honest story, not a tear-jerker, not at all. Not the sort of story Brenner had pulled from the Raglans. And, I had to admit, not the sort of story which would prompt anyone to contribute a hundred dollars to the Debbie Fund.
I rewound the tape, skipping back and forth until I found the part I wanted, then copied it and added two paragraphs to it, feeling uneasy all the time. Then I went to the phone.
“Jackson,” I said, when I got through to him, “you watch the Larry Brenner show tonight?”
“Last half of it. I’m trying to figure what to take off the front page.”
“You’re the editor. How far along is it?”
“Early edition’s out — state edition is on press. I can have the change from home delivery in the city. Got something?”
I read him what I’d written. It wasn’t a complete story, but Jackson could handle the rest of it. When I got through I opened myself a beer, and wondered if I should try to match Brenner’s gesture with a hundred dollar cheque.
I flicked the TV set back on and confirmed my suspicion that the station was turning the Debbie Fund into an impromptu telethon. Just ninety minutes after Raglan’s appearance, the pledges were estimated at better than twenty thousand dollars.
Friday morning dawned bleak and overcast. I unfolded the morning paper and read what Jackson had done to the front page. It seemed as uninspiring as the weather.
Pritch frowned at me as I walked into the city room. He stood up as I approached his desk. “Ted,” he said quietly, “Raglan’s unhappy, boy. He’s so unhappy he’s threatened to sue the paper, you, me, Old Man Owens and two or three John Does.”
“For what?”
“For telling the world what Debbie is really like. Defamation of character.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’ve gone over that story with a magnifying glass and I can’t find anything libelous in it. But you know Owens and lawsuits.” He paused. “There’s only one condition under which Raglan won’t sue, and Mr. Owens decided to meet it. Your cheque is waiting at the cashier’s desk.”
“Now wait a minute!”
“Look at it this way,” Pritch said reasonably. “Raglan’s in a corner. He doesn’t have a hundred grand, but he’s worked out a way to get it. He sees you as a threat to the Debbie Fund and he panics. He’ll cool off once he gets her back. Don’t do anything rash. I’m not trying to hire a replacement.”
I nodded. “I guess what I resent most is being taken off this story.”
Pritch grinned. “How can I take you off a story if you don’t work for me any more?”
“You have a point,” I agreed. “My phone still work?”
“Yep.”
“I want to talk to Raglan.” Joe Raglan didn’t want to talk to me. I had the feeling, when I hung up, I’d be lucky not to be picked up on suspicion of spitting on the sidewalk.
I spent an hour at the typewriter, making notes. Then I picked up my briefcase, my hat and my check, and went at to find out why. There had to be a reason behind it, more valid than the theory Pritch had advanced. I probably knew Joe Raglan as well as anyone else in the city did. And the Joe Raglan I knew was incapable of panic.
I sat in the car for a long time an reviewed the case, right from the beginning. I consulted my notes and went over conversations I’d had with the people involved.
One of the first things Raglan had said to me was that there had been prowler reports before in that neighbourhood; Mrs. Van Drimmelen and Mrs. Phillips had contradicted that.
The time element seemed to have holes in it, too. I had been in Raglan’s office at ten-thirty when Debbie called. We had arrived at ten-forty. Therefore, within that ten minutes she must have disappeared. Van Drimmelen had tried to call her at ten-thirty and the phone was busy. That part of it checked.
But three times in the next ten minutes Van Drimmelen had tried to call her and it was still busy. She had finished talking to Joe, and was either conversing with someone else, or had been interrupted while attempting to place the call. But Van Drimmelen had called the operator and asked her to check the line; she had reported that the line was actually busy, that there was conversation in progress. That completed her report.
Was it my call to the Bulletin she’d plugged in on? No, because I didn’t talk for more than three minutes. The phone rang almost immediately after that, and it was Van Drimmelen. He claimed he’d waited half an hour before placing that particular call. Either the man’s time sense was drastically off, or there was something else amiss. I got out pencil and paper, trying to unscramble it.
It took about an hour, but suddenly I had the jellyfish by the handle, and when I held it up I didn’t like what I saw at all. There were a few things I’d have to check, but now that I knew what I was looking for it would be easy. I spent the next two hours feeding dimes into a phone booth.
Mrs. Van Drimmelen, at home, gave me one of the answers.
Her husband, at work, gave me another. “Yes,” he said, “I like to keep my watch fifteen minutes fast. I’m more frequently on time for appointments that way. I suppose it was actually about ten-fifteen when I started calling home.”
I wondered who Debbie would have been talking to before she called her father. It seemed strange that whoever it was had not volunteered the information. Unless, of course, it had been the kidnapper himself.
Fortunately, I was on good terms with Jay Evans, the local phone company manager. After an enlightening technical conversation, he cleared me with his Chief Special Agent, who promised me he’d get in touch with the verifying operator and have her call me right back. They both warned me that there was but one chance in a hundred that the girl would remember any one particular number.
By a stroke of luck, the operator remembered Liberty 11-776. “I thought it was a good omen,” she said, “seeing that it was one of the last numbers I checked before my relief came.”
“Could you tell me the exact time you checked it?”
“We don’t log verifications, but it must have been just a couple of minutes before ten-thirty.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t a couple of minutes before?”
“It couldn’t have been. My break is at ten-thirty.”