"I like that approach so long as you're very careful. Meanwhile, I'll do a little more research on these men — starting with a trip into the passport office in D.C. to see if I can get a look at their pictures."
"Terrific."
"Tullis doesn't look like much on this map," Rudy added. "Just a speck, really. The nearest town of any size is right here. Belinda. Belinda, West Virginia."
"Pretty name," Ellen said.
CHAPTER 29
Ellen was humming along with a Sinatra CD as she crossed the Shenandoah River. She was in northern Virginia, heading southwest toward the West Virginia state line. The late morning sun was therapeutically warm, the highway was newly paved and virtually empty, and soon, very soon, she might be helping to cage the beast who had threatened her family and single-handedly infected a large number of people with a hideous, deadly disease. It wasn't at all a sure thing yet that Vinyl Sutcher was the man she wanted, but getting a look at him was the only way she would ever know for sure.
Her first stop of the day had been at the police station in her hometown of Glenside. Chief Ed Curran was a member of the club where Howard had played golf and she had played tennis, quite often with Curran's wife, Lorraine. She arrived at the station only to discover that the Currans were away in Italy for another week, celebrating their thirtieth anniversary. Ed's stand-in, a much younger man named Wes Streeter, was a homegrown product — a former high school football hero — totally lacking Curran's warmth and, Ellen quickly discerned, much of his intelligence as well.
"So this man with the scar, he broke into your house, waited for you to come home, and then threatened to kill your granddaughter. Why?"
"I don't want any publicity about the reasons why. Can you promise me that?"
"Mrs. Kroft, I can't promise you anything until you tell me what's going on."
"Never mind. I'll take care of matters myself."
"You should file formal charges against this man right here," Streeter said. "This is where the crime occurred."
"I don't even know for certain if the name I have is the man who broke into my house. I just want to get a look at him. One look. A photo or in person, I don't care which. The moment I see him I'll know if he's the one or not. Isn't there some sort of police computer site where you can punch in his name and address and see if he's been in trouble before?"
Streeter, clearly feeling that there might be more to the matter with the woman seated across from him than with the alleged criminal, ran the name Vinyl Sutcher of Tullis, West Virginia, through his computer, but came up empty. Eventually, with some hardly subtle prompting from Ellen, he determined that Tullis, West Virginia, had no police department of its own, but was serviced by the adjacent town of Belinda. By this time, the policeman was bewildered by Ellen and her story, and most anxious to move on to other business. He presented her with the number of the Belinda police, the name of the chief, William Grimes, and a quiet room where she could make a call. She had an image of Andy Griffith, Don Knotts, and Mayberry in mind as she dialed, so after she told the officer who answered why she was calling, she wasn't that surprised to be told that Chief Grimes would be right with her.
"Chief Grimes."
Ellen's mental image was of a man older than Wes Streeter and younger than Ed Curran. Andy Griffith.
"Chief Grimes, my name is Ellen Kroft. I'm calling from the police station in Glenside, Maryland, where I live, at the urging of the acting police chief here. A few days ago a man broke into my house and threatened me and my family if I didn't do something he wanted. I have reason to believe the man might be from Tullis, next to your town. His name is Sutcher, Vinyl Sutcher. Do you have a few minutes?"
"We always try to make time for our neighbors in Maryland," Chief Grimes replied.
The truncated story she told to Chief Bill Grimes included her suspicions regarding the Lassa fever outbreaks and the way she had ultimately derived Sutcher's name from the passenger manifest.
The Vinny Sutcher the chief recalled didn't fit the description Ellen gave him all that well. From what Grimes remembered — and he admitted he wasn't at all sure he was thinking of the right man — Sutcher was stocky, but not that tall, and had no scar like the one Ellen described above his lip. He was a woodsman and occasional bodyguard of some sort who did live in the next town. Grimes recalled seeing him briefly a year or so ago after he allegedly shoved a man who rear-ended him at a traffic light. The police chief couldn't remember how that incident had been resolved, but he didn't think formal charges were ever filed.
If she wanted to drive down to Belinda, he would be pleased to meet with her, take a statement, and share what information he could obtain on the man, including a photo if, in fact, Sutcher had actually been arrested. And if the evidence she presented was compelling enough, he would certainly contact the FBI and assist them in putting together an arrest warrant, he said.
"I'll give you my cell phone number in case there are any problems," he said.
"And I'll give you mine."
It was just after two when Ellen rounded a sweeping curve on a mountain road and got her first glimpse of Belinda, West Virginia, a postcard-perfect town, nestled in a broad valley just to the east of a range of rolling foothills. Beyond the hills, the craggy Allegheny Mountains probed upward into the azure afternoon sky. It had been more than three hours since she left home, but the uninterrupted drive, with CDs by Carly Simon and Natalie Cole alternating with Lyle Lovett and Sinatra, seemed much shorter.
Throughout the trip, Rudy was very much on her mind. Not surprisingly, he had said and done all the right things to make her feel less humiliated at having opened the letter from his drawer. Now it was just a matter of sorting through her feelings for him, searching beneath the enduring warmth of their friendship for the spark of passion that, even at sixty-three, she wanted to have. Rudy loved her truly, of that she had no doubt. And he was certainly a man she could grow old with. The question she was mulling over as she swung onto Main Street was whether or not he was a man she could grow young with.
Her meeting with Police Chief Grimes wasn't scheduled for almost three hours, and except for a doughnut and the coffee she had brought in a thermos, she hadn't had a thing to eat since leaving Glenside. Her hangover was essentially gone, but the pledge she made about drinking wine in the morning would, she hoped, live on forever. She thought about driving through Belinda and into Tullis, just to check out what the place might look like, but the Belinda Diner, a classic, railroad-car eatery on the edge of town, was just too inviting to pass up. The place was nearly empty. A competent-looking, middle-aged waitress in jeans and a T was serving two elderly women in one booth and two grizzled men in another.
"Anyplace you like," she called out cheerily.
Ellen took a copy of the Montgomery County Weekly Bugle from a rack and brought it to a booth in the corner, well away from the other patrons. She ordered the meat loaf special and turned to the police report, as she inevitably did when reading any small-town newspaper, including her own. Barking dog… Stranger lurking… Fight… Deer hit by truck… Disturbance… Drink dispenser vandalized… Patient kidnapped. Tucked in among two dozen or so police calls was a two-sentence report of the kidnapping of a hospital patient from an ambulance. Ellen found the article dealing with the crime on page I and read the skimpy account until the waitress came with her meal.
"What's this kidnapping thing all about?" Ellen asked.
The waitress shrugged. "No one knows," she said with a pleasant twang. "Rumor I heard is that her doctor did it. Doc Rutledge. The patient was a doctor herself. Now she's gone an' he's vanished, too. Maybe he jes got obsessed with her — you know, couldn't live without her. So he hired a couple of thugs to snatch her, then acts like he's as surprised as the next fella."