Dead Silence by Randy Wayne White Read Free Book Online Page A

silver-red when they collided with Will’s hard, dark eyes.

5
    A t 9:30 p.m., a security guard signed me into Barbara Hayes-Sorrento’s suite, which was actually two suites, courtesy of hotel management. They’d donated the adjoining rooms because there were almost as many staffers inside working for the senator as there were reporters outside waiting for a statement.
    Hooker was expecting me because the front desk had called. He wore a corduroy shooting jacket with patches at the elbows, a blue cravat tucked into his shirt. Same clothes he’d worn when he’d excused himself to freshen his whiskey four hours earlier at the Explorers Club. Not a stain or a scratch on him.
    “Any word from the kidnappers?” I asked, taking off gloves that Esterline had loaned me. From the next room, I could hear one-sided phone conversations, the voices of men and women blending with the clatter of a printer.
    “No news, I’m afraid. We’ve put a few pieces of the puzzle together, but nothing at all on the boy. The senator’s been trying to contact his parents. Apparently, the father abandoned the family long ago. And staff can’t seem to locate the mother.”
    Because the Brit read my expression correctly, he added, “It wasn’t his parents. The boy lives with a foster family in Minneapolis. The men were after Barbara, no one doubts that. Thanks to you, I was able to steer her out of harm’s way. Taking the child wasn’t planned. It may be true of the limo driver as well, but that’s not been confirmed.”
    I said, “William Chaser, a teenager from Minnesota. The police kept me updated.”
    “Yes—Will I think he’s called. Good organization, the NYPD. They’ve assigned liaison officers to keep the senator informed. She’s very pleased you got one of the kidnappers but worried about you catching pneumonia.”
    I was picturing the kid in his cowboy hat and boots, seeing his tough-guy expression when I ordered him back in the limo. By now, he had probably bawled himself dry, too scared to risk his cowboy act.
    I said, “No father, living with a foster family? Jesus, a high school freshman. That makes him about thirteen years old.”
    Hooker said, “Fourteen. He was held back last term.”
    “Huh?” I didn’t know details, but the essay contest had to be a big deal if the prize was a trip to New York. Statewide, maybe nationwide. And from Minnesota? He was no dummy.
    “Perhaps troubled,” Hooker offered. Barbara’s staff had assembled all the info they could gather on the teen—not easily done because they couldn’t contact his teachers or friends until a parent had been notified. The foster parents didn’t count because they weren’t adopting, they were volunteers with Lutheran Social Services. The program provided temporary homes for teens at risk.
    Will Chaser had actually grown up on an Indian reservation south of Oklahoma City, Hooker told me. It explained the cowboy connection. The reservation was in Seminole County, oil and gas country, but also a stronghold of federally funded ghettos and the apparatus associated with despair: day care, public housing, programs for substance abusers, which included about sixty percent of the adult male population.
    Two years ago, the Indian Opportunities Center had “relocated” the boy to a Sioux reservation near Fond du Lac. Maybe he had gotten in trouble, or maybe he’d displayed uncommon talent. A few months later, Lutheran Social Services accepted him into their Foster Grandparents Program. He had been living in Minneapolis ever since with a couple in their fifties, Ruth and Otto Guttersen. If the senator’s staff couldn’t contact the birth parents by midnight, the FBI would notify the Guttersens that Will had been abducted.
    Hooker said, “The child has already had his share of trouble. A bloody pity he has to go through something like this.”
    “Fourteen years old,” I repeated, feeling a renewed urgency. I checked my watch: 9:40 p.m.
    An abduction fires