A Call from Rockford (A Snap Malek Mystery)

  A Call from Rockford

  Robert Goldsborough

  A CALL FROM ROCKFORD

  An Echelon Short eBook

  First Echelon Edition / November 2010

  All rights Reserved.

  Copyright © 2010 by Robert Goldsborough

  Cover illustration © Karen L. Syed

  Echelon Press, LLC

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  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Echelon Press, LLC.

  ISBN: 978-1-59080-717-0

  PRODUCED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  March 1949

  It had been a frantic day in the Police Headquarters press room, one of my busiest stints there in years.

  I ended up phoning in four major stories to the Tribune city desk. One about a sergeant killed in a gun battle with a bank robber in Rogers Park; another centering on a fugitive cop killer who got flushed out of a field down in the south suburbs and surrendered; a third, a phone interview with the detective who tracked down and captured the so-called 'Smiling Rapist,' an attacker of more than forty women; and last, a surprise press conference on the second floor, in which the police commissioner announced that four members of the Vice Squad were being charged, incredibly, with running their own prostitution ring.

  So on my ride home to Oak Park on the swaying Lake Street Elevated train that rainy early spring evening, I put work out of my mind and focused on one thing: The rib roast–my favorite dish–Catherine had promised for dinner. But when I opened our front door and walked into the spacious stucco house on Scoville Avenue, I knew immediately, from my wife's expression, that she had something on her mind other than dinner.

  "You look troubled, my love," I said as we embraced in the front hall.

  She nodded somberly, breaking the clinch. "You've met Susan Wallace, from the library."

  "Yeah, the tall brunette with the pearly whites that probably glow in the dark, right? You introduced us once a few months back, when I picked you up at work." Catherine puts in three days a week at the Oak Park Public Library.

  "That's her, a wonderful person, warm, caring. She's been an assistant librarian for only a few months, but she has fit in so well, almost as if she's been there forever. Everybody likes Susan."

  "Ah, but I sense a shoe about to drop," I said.

  "Oh, yes. Susan and I were shelving books together today, and she broke down, started sobbing right there in the stacks. She and her husband have only one child, a thirteen-year-old daughter, Patty. And she's been gone–missing, that is–for four days."

  "Sounds to me like a runaway. Unfortunately, this sort of thing happens all too often."

  Catherine shook her head. "I don't think so, Steve. I've met Patty three or four times, when she's stopped by the library after school. She's quiet but friendly, very polite. She seems like the last kid who'd want to run away."

  "Was she acting normal recently?"

  "So Susan told me, although she said Patty seemed a little quieter than usual in recent weeks."

  "Well, kids that age do tend to go through all sorts of mood cycles, for all sorts of reasons, most of which seem insignificant to us uncomprehending adults. I assume her parents have checked with all her friends to see if, for some reason, she's staying with one of them."

  "Yes, and of course they've called the Oak Park Police and filed a missing persons report."

  "Hmm. I have to say the situation doesn't sound good. As you're aware, at least two teenage girls have been attacked in the village the last few weeks. One scared the bastard away by screaming, the other got knocked down, but the would-be rapist ran off when a motorist pulled over to see what was going on."

  "I take it you're suggesting Patty Wallace wasn't so fortunate?" Catherine asked.

  "Not necessarily, but it certainly is possible. As far as we know, the guy who attacked those two girls in this peaceful community is still at large. There's been nothing in our weekly paper about him being nailed. The one piece I read a few weeks back suggested the local cops didn't even get a good description of him from the two girls or the motorist who became a Good Samaritan."

  Catherine dropped onto the living room sofa and kneaded her hands. "Susan asked me if you might be willing to write an article for the Trib about what's happened. She thought if Patty was…maybe being held somewhere, and if her picture ran with the article, a reader would remember having seen her with…with whoever took her."

  "Darling, I can't blame your co-worker for suggesting such a piece, but that's really outside my normal area."

  "That's what I told Susan. But she said neither she nor her husband have a connection with anyone else on a newspaper, and they thought of you. They're desperate."

  "Let me think about it. Now, is that the delicious aroma of a rib roast that's tickling my nostrils?" I asked, helping Catherine to her feet and guiding her in the direction of the kitchen.

  * * *

  The roast was as good as ever, although the mood at the dining room table was subdued. We didn't talk further about Patty Wallace's disappearance, but the subject loomed over us for the rest of the evening.

  The next day at Police Headquarters, I phoned the Tribune newsroom. "I want to suggest an article," I told Murray, the day city editor. "A thirteen-year-old Oak Park girl, a neighbor of ours, has been missing for several days, and–"

  "Snap, stop, stop right there," he barked in his normal machine-gun cadence. "Number One, because this is a neighbor, you're emotionally involved; bad idea for you as a reporter. Number Two, tragic as it is, kids run away all the time. There would have to be a peg, a damned good peg, to make this one news."

  "Hold on, Hal," I said. "Number One, I have never even laid eyes on this girl, so there is no emotional involvement whatever, only concern. Number Two, I propose to do a piece about the whole issue of runaways–the total number there are in the Chicago area each year, what the reasons are, how many of them are eventually found, statistics on their ages, etcetera–and use this girl as the focal point, to put a face on the problem."

  That slowed Murray down. "Okay, maybe you got something at that. I'll transfer you to Moreland."

  Tom Moreland handled the scheduling of news features–those longer and more-or-less timeless articles that run in the main news section when there's room for them. I repeated my idea to him and got a semi-enthusiastic go-ahead. "Think you can look at this objectively, given that the missing girl you're focusing on is a neighbor?" he posed.

  "As I told Murray, I've never met this girl, or her parents, for that matter," I said, omitting the fact that I had come in contact with the girl's mother, if only for a moment.

  "Good enough, Snap," Moreland said. "Give me a column and a half. And you'll get us a photo of the girl, right?"

  I said I would and told him I'd have the piece in his hands within a week. I added that I'd find another missing child to focus on if Patty Wallace was found before I finished the article. But something told me that was unlikely.

  * * *

  When I got home that night, I filled Catherine in on the day's events. "I want to meet the Wallaces," I told her. "And I want you to go with me to their house. If not tonight, then tomorrow, no later."

  "All right," she said, surprised by this burst of activity after my initial reluctance to get involved. "But I don't see how my being there can help."

  "Oh, I do, I really do. You're a familiar face, at least to Susan W
allace. After all, it was you she confided in. You'll be a calming presence. You should be the one to call them and set the visit up."

  Catherine was not used to being involved in my work, but I needed her as a buffer between me and the distraught parents. She was uneasy, but called Susan Wallace and told her I was planning to do a story on their daughter's disappearance. Per my instructions, she did not mention that Patty would be part of a larger story on missing kids. I saw no need to complicate matters by bringing that up.

  I didn't listen to Catherine's end of the phone conversation. When she had finished, she returned to the den, where I was reading that evening's Daily News.

  "Susan's very grateful to you, and says she and Bill, that's her husband, would be glad to have us come over after dinner tonight."

  The Wallaces lived only four blocks north of us, easy walking distance on a surprisingly balmy evening for late March. "This is the place," Catherine said, pointing at a two-story house that bore a passing resemblance to our own.

  A solemn Susan Wallace answered the door, trying without success to deliver a welcoming smile. "Mr. Malek, so good of you to come," she said.

  "Please, call me Steve," I answered as we went into the living room, where her husband stood.

  "I'm Bill Wallace," he said, holding out a hand and shaking mine in a firm grip. His strong, square, dark face mirrored the tension of the last several days.

  Catherine and I sat on a davenport while the Wallaces parked on matching armchairs, facing us across a coffee table. We politely refused Susan's offer of refreshments, and I cleared my throat and pulled out a notebook to signal I was about to play newspaper reporter.

  "I can only imagine how rough these days have been for you both," I said, looking to one parent and then the other. "So please excuse some of my questions if they seem to be insensitive."

  "Please go ahead, go ahead," Bill Wallace said, coming forward in his chair and leaning beefy forearms on his knees. "Susan and I are ready to answer anything you might ask, anything at all to help find Patty."

  "Thanks. First, can either of you think of any reason, however insignificant, that Patty might want to run away?"

  "None," the girl's mother answered quickly, tearing up.

  "She seemed like always," Bill added. "A good student, did well in class, loved her music."

  "Music, eh?" I asked. "Did she sing or play?"

  "Patty plays the violin," Susan said. "Her music teacher at school told us she was the best one in their orchestra, by far. That she has great potential."

  "By chance are any of her clothes missing?"

  "I can't be sure, but I doubt it, other than what she was wearing…that day," her mother answered. "It's hard to keep up with what's in her wardrobe these days."

  "Uh-huh. What about friends–did she have a lot of them?"

  Bill Wallace looked at his wife for an answer. "Yes, several, all girls, of course," she said. "In eighth grade, the boy-girl thing hasn't quite got started yet, not like high school."

  "Which is not to say Patty isn't attractive," her father quickly put in. "I would have to say she's probably the prettiest girl in her class, based on what I've seen. Call it a father's pride, but I stand by it."

  "And I gather you've talked to all of her friends since her disappearance?"

  "Yes, all of them," her mother said. "Five or six in all, including one from out-of-town that she went to violin camp with last summer. None of them, nor their parents, were helpful, other than to be…well, sympathetic."

  This was tough going, as I knew it would be. Next I asked them to describe the day she disappeared. Tears came again as Susan told about expecting Patty at home about four-forty-five, after orchestra practice.

  "The school's only three blocks away, and she always walked. After all, it's only just three…" She broke down at that point, and I turned to Catherine, who, tears welling in her own eyes, nodded the message that it was time for us to leave.

  Before we went, I asked for a picture, which they had ready on the mantel shelf above the fireplace. Bill Wallace handed it to me as if it were a precious gem and shook hands again, then turned toward his wife, who was sobbing in her chair as we said our good-byes.

  "Your thoughts?" I asked Catherine as we walked home.

  "I don't know, Steve. I just don't know. The whole thing is heartbreaking. You've probably been through this sort of situation before, I'm sure. Having to talk to people who've suffered a tragedy of one kind or another."

  "Yeah, but this is about as bad as it gets, the loss of a child, or at least the possible loss," I said, stopping under a streetlight to study the color photograph of Patty Wallace. Her father was right: This was a lovely girl, who would almost certainly become a beautiful woman, if…

  She had her mother's dark brown hair, which framed an oval, smiling, happy face. She got the deep blue eyes from her father, the creamy complexion from Susan. The teen-age curse of acne had not yet struck.

  "Is this the way you remember her?" I asked Catherine, holding out the photo as we stood on the sidewalk.

  "Yes, absolutely. When I first met Patty, I thought, 'This is the kind of daughter I'd like to have had myself.'"

  Any down time I had at work for the next week was devoted to working on the article about missing children. I talked by phone to shelters, pastors, and priests, the Missing Persons Department at Headquarters, and a professor up at Northwestern who had done extensive research on the subject.

  I cranked out the piece on my portable Smith-Corona at home, showing it to Catherine for her comments. "It reads very well to me," she said, "and I think you have just the right amount about Patty in there. The article's not just about her, but as you had said to me at the start, she's the catalyst, the focus. I just hope the paper will run her picture."

  "I'm going to push for it," I said, "for two reasons: First, it personalizes the subject; second, maybe, just maybe, someone will recognize her and lead us to her." Little did I know.

  * * *

  I stopped in at Tribune Tower the next morning before heading to Police Headquarters and dropped off my article to Moreland, along with Patty Wallace's photo.

  "The face of an angel," he commented, looking at the picture and shaking his head. "My God, what a world we live in, Snap. I'm not sure I want to know the answer to this, but do you have any idea what's happened to her?"

  "None at all," I told him. "But I fear for the worst."

  "Me too," he said with a sigh, placing the photo on his desk blotter.

  Reader reaction to the article was hardly overwhelming. Oh, the paper ran one letter to the editor from a woman claiming that the police did almost nothing to locate her 18-year-old daughter, who had disappeared. And another woman phoned me to ask if I would write an article about her missing son, a 15-year-old who had never returned from a trip to a neighborhood drug store on the Northwest Side of the city. I had to tell her that, sorry as I was, the paper simply could not write about every lost teen.

  It had been over a month since Patty's disappearance and two weeks since my piece had run when I got a phone call at my desk in the Headquarters press room.

  "Mr. Malek?" the scratchy male voice asked.

  "That's me. What can I do for you?"

  "I called the Tribune offices, and they gave me this number. I read your feature about missing kids." He paused, apparently expecting me to comment.

  "Yes…and?"

  "I was wondering if maybe there was a reward for, well, shall we say, locating that girl you wrote about, the one whose picture you ran."

  "Uh, not that I'm aware of, " I said as my hand tightened on the receiver.

  "I thought maybe your paper would, well, you know, be willing to pay something for…"

  "Where are you calling from?"

  "Uh, Rockford," he said.

  "You read the Tribune out there?"

  "Yeah, and our local paper, too. But you guys got the best horse-racing coverage."

  "And you say you know wher
e Patty…that girl…is?"

  "You heard me right."

  My fellow reporters in the press room had stopped their conversation and were watching me. I stubbed out a cigarette and took a deep breath. "All right, Mr…?"

  "Blake," the voice on the other end said.

  "All right, Mr. Blake. The fact is, there's no reward, at least not formally, although I think we might be able to come up with something for you, assuming you have concrete information."

  He cackled dryly. "Glad to hear it. But before you even ask, I'm not going to tell you anything over the telephone. You'll have to come out here. You know where Rockford is, don't you?"

  "I do," I said as my heart accelerated. "Tomorrow is Saturday; how about then?"

  "Just what I was going to suggest!" he answered with another nervous cackle. He gave me the name and address of a café, and we settled on 10:00 a.m. to meet.

  "I'll be in a booth off to the right as you walk in the door," Blake said, "wearing a flat gray cap."

  * * *

  At home that night, I filled Catherine in on my Rockford conversation. "Do you think he's…got her?" she asked.

  "Almost certainly not. He wouldn't so readily have given me his name if that were the case."

  "You're assuming Blake is his name."

  "Point taken. Still, I think he may–repeat may–know where she is."

  "Do you want me to go with you, Steve?"

  "I'd love the company, but this had better be a solo flight all the way. I don't want to do anything to spook the guy."

  "You'll give him money?"

  "If I have to, yes, but not much. I'll wait to see what he has to say."

  "Will it do any good for me to tell you to be careful?" she asked, putting her arms around me and squeezing.

  "Of course it will, my love. But I don't think we're dealing with a particularly dangerous character here."

  * * *

  The next morning at a few minutes before eight, I backed the old Ford coupe out of our garage and into the alley to begin the 70-mile trip to Rockford, a burg I had never set foot in. I had my trusty Standard Oil road map of Illinois, although I barely needed it, seeing as just about the whole trip would be on U.S. Route 20, which starts out in the Chicago area as good old Lake Street. What I really needed was a map of Rockford.