“No, Katherine’s changed her mind—”
“Katherine?”
“Johnnie’s mother.”
His mother. My mouth drops open at the idea of meeting Ray Raintree’s mother.
“Changed her mind about what?”
“She doesn’t want to talk to them yet. Soon, real soon, just not yet. They’re going to have to wait a little while before they get hold of her. You can imagine, this is very emotional for the Keplers, it’s just difficult as hell, and they’ve decided they don’t want cops and reporters crawling all over them. They just want to make absolutely sure he’s really their boy, and they want to see him again.”
I can’t find words to reply to that amazing wish.
“But I thought you said you know he’s their child.”
“I do know it, but there’s nothing like actually seeing him. It’s like they know, but they can’t let themselves really believe it until they see him with their own eyes.”
I think that’s a futile hope, given the current manhunt.
“Hell, he may be dead already,” the retired deputy says, echoing my thoughts. “Katherine’s worried about the death penalty. I’m more worried about some trigger-happy bounty hunter. If they capture him, and put him in prison, the Keplers will have plenty of time to get to know him. But that’s my point—the Keplers want to see him if they can, but they also want to try to keep this quiet for as long as they can. It’s not like they want to end up on Entertainment Tonight themselves.”
“Deputy Lawrence—”
“Not anymore. I’m just Jack.”
“Thank you. And I’m Marie. Jack, may I meet them?”
“Yeah, they want to tell somebody their story.”
“The cops are going to have to hear it, Jack. It might help them find Ray, or even bring him in, if he thought he was going to get to see his family.”
“We’ll cross that bridge real soon, but they want to talk to you.”
“Why?”
“That’s easy. Because you’re writing a book about him. You’re the one who’s telling his story, whether he lives or dies, and his mother wants to make sure somebody tells it true. You’ve met him, right?”
“Yes, a few times.”
“She wants to talk to somebody who knows him.”
I want to tell him that nobody “knows” Ray Raintree.
“We figure if Katherine talks to you, she won’t have to talk to any other newspaper people, or other journalists.”
I can’t even begin to tell him how naive that hope is.
“Plus,” he adds, sounding forceful and upbeat, “you’ve got all those contacts, when we’re ready.”
“Do they want to talk to me over the phone?”
“They want to meet you.”
“Are they coming to Bahia?”
“Could you come here?”
“You bet! How soon?”
“Sooner the better.”
“I’ll get the first flight I can, Jack. Tonight, if I can do it, or is that sooner than you meant?”
“No, that’s great. We were hoping.”
“Good. Well, tell me where I’m going, and how to get there.”
“You’ll fly in to Kansas City International Airport. I’ll pick you up, and we’ll drive right over to Katherine’s house. She told me to tell you that she’d really like it if you’d stay in Johnnie’s room.”
I wouldn’t miss this chance for anything.
“Please tell her that I gratefully accept her kind invitation.”
“She’ll like you,” he says, with a sudden smile in his gravelly voice.
“How do you know that?”
“You’re polite, not like some big shot.”
I have not felt quite so flattered in a long time, but I know that now I have to risk losing his good will.
“Jack?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Listen, I have really got to let the authorities down here know about this. I can’t just go flying off to Kansas like a private eye, without telling the cops about this.”
“Well,” he says, doubtfully. “Katherine says—”
“She doesn’t have to talk to them, Jack, not until she wants to.”
He finally agrees to let me do it, because I make it clear that ethically I can’t do otherwise. I’m not going to Kansas without informing Anschutz and Flanck about this revolution in their case. I can just imagine how they would react if they found out later that I had kept this amazing news from them.
As soon as we hang up, I call a series of people, starting with my travel agent. Then I call the detectives, and Franklin, and Leanne English. I have to be evenhanded, or I’ll lose my sources in my own hometown. It’s policy with me to be honest with everybody I interview. I never attempt to play one against another, either. I never lie to the cops, to the victim’s families, or to the murderers—especially never to them, on the theory that it takes one to know one, and I’d get caught at it. In fact, if one of the other principals in this case were to ask me, “Are you having an affair with the prosecutor?” I’d have to say yes, and I’ve told him I would. Apart from that, I keep all of their secrets, unless given permission to publish them. My career depends on earning and keeping the trust of dozens of people. Many of these people are suspicious of journalists, and all of them are vulnerable, in their own ways. With a careless phrase, I could humiliate an innocent person, or ruin a lawman’s or a lawyer’s reputation. I prevent that from happening by checking my facts, and by choosing to err on the side of kindness if I have to choose between that and printing a gratuitous cruelty. That’s why—except for the villains—nobody is “ugly” in my books; they are “interesting-looking.” Nobody is fat or skinny, either; they are “attractively robust” or “fashionably slim.” By now, I have a reputation for being both diplomatic and a straight shooter, which is a high-wire act at times. It also helps to be famous, because total strangers are more likely to take my phone calls.
I have no problem getting through to the detectives with this stunning news from the Midwest.
“You believe these people?” Robyn Anschutz asks me.
“I think . . . that they believe it,” is my careful reply.
“If it’s true, it’s damned amazing.”
“It sure is.”
“It would explain a lot.”
“Yeah.”
“But not everything, like where he’s been all these years.”
“And who took him,” Paul Flanck interrupts, on an extension.
“Who abducted the abductor?” Robyn says, wonderingly. “Wow.”
The detectives promise me they will contact Jack Lawrence before attempting to call the Kepler family.
This time, even Leanne English takes my call.
“How are you?” I ask her, sympathetically.
She is speaking through a wired jaw and is hard to understand. “I’ve been better,” she slurs. “Give me these people’s phone number.”
“I’ll give them your number,” I counter. Briefly, I consider offering her a deal: You tell me who’s paying Ray’s legal bills, and I’ll tell you how to reach his mother. But I can’t do that.
She has to be satisfied with my other offer.
Then I call Franklin, and we spend several minutes expressing our mutual astonishment at this turn of events. Finally, I say to him, “Okay, give me an official quote for my book, sweetie.”
He thinks a moment, and then says:
“If this turns out to be true, it is a terrible twist of fate.” He puts on his “prosecutor” voice and gives me plenty of time to write this down. “As far as I know, this is the first case on record of a kidnapped child growing up to become a kidnapper. The principle of abuse begetting abuse is familiar to most people, but this variation is unknown to me.”
“Great,” I murmur as I scribble. “Anything else?”
“We should have seen it coming,” he gives me. “Think of all the kids who get snatched. It’s mostly parental kidnappings, but
it’s still kidnapping. I think we could start seeing second- and third-generation snatchers.” Suddenly he really does sound like a prosecutor, angry, and ready to charge into battle against anonymous legions of kidnappers, be they biological parents, or total strangers. “If abuse is all you know, then maybe abuse is what you do. If kidnapping is what you know, then maybe kidnapping is what you do.”
“Yeah, but Franklin, what about children who grow up with cruel parents, and turn out fine?”
I know what he’s going to say, but I need it in quotes.
“Then abuse is not all they knew.”
“Well, then, what about the first six years of Ray’s life, Franklin? What if it turns out that he was loved and treated kindly then?”
“What about it?”
“Well, shouldn’t that have saved him from this?”
“Not necessarily. You put the best adjusted rat in the world in a box, and you subject it to random torture, and it will give up hope, and die. The most loving rat mother in the world could give birth to it, and nurture it for the rat equivalent of six years of a child’s life, and you turn that sweet, beloved little rat over to an experimental psychologist, and you’ll have a psychotic rat, and then a dead one, in a matter of days.”
“But rats aren’t human beings, Franklin.”
“Yes,” he agrees, with a steely edge to his voice. “But a lot of human beings are rats.”
That is exactly what I hoped he’d say. It will look great on the page.
I think he’s finished speaking, and I put my pen down, only to have to pick it up again quickly, when he bursts out furiously, “That is why it is so important for adults to be nice to kids. Every damn, annoying one of ’em. Smile at every kid, I tell people, because that may be the only smile they get from any adult all week long. If I catch any of my assistants being rude to children, I tell them, congratulations, you just helped create another alienated, miserable human being.”
“If this is true about Ray,” I say, “and they bring him in again, will you still want to go for the death penalty?”
“Absolutely! The fact that he may have been abducted, or even abused, doesn’t bring Natty back, does it? You try telling her parents to feel sorry for poor little Ray Raintree, and see how far you get. I don’t care where these cycles start, we’ve got to stop them somewhere, Marie, and if that means I have to put Ray in the electric chair, I will.”
“But what if he’s one of those miserable alienated human beings that other miserable alienated human beings created?”
“Well, then, let’s put him out of his misery,” says Franklin, in a tone of wry, grim humor.
It’s easier to agree with him before I meet Ray’s mother.
Twenty-four hours after those conversations I find myself feeling simply astonished to be sitting on Ray’s childhood bed, in Kansas. The wallpaper is from the 1970s. His toys surround me, and I see some that would be considered collector’s items now. His mother is awake in the living room, because she says she doesn’t know how she can ever sleep until she sees him again.
I open my laptop and begin writing a new chapter for a book that is suddenly not just about one abduction, but two.
Part 2
JOHNNIE
The Little Mermaid
By Marie Lightfoot
CHAPTER EIGHT
While Florida searched for Ray Raintree, the solution to the mystery of his identity began to unfold in a place most of the cops had never heard of, in the home of a woman they didn’t know anything about.
The place was Olathe, Kansas, thirty miles south of Kansas City.
The woman was Kim Kepler, thirty years old and unmarried, with no children. At the exact moment the mystery dissolved, Kim was eating take-out Chinese food off a TV tray and watching Entertainment Tonight. The food was moo shoo pork, shredded meat rolled in thin pancakes, which she dipped in soy sauce. It was her favorite oriental food, a little bland for some people’s taste, perhaps, but tasty to her, and she ordered it every time she ate Chinese. She had definite habits like that, sticking to her tried-and-true favorites whether that meant cheese enchiladas at Mexican restaurants, or a quarter pounder with cheese at McDonald’s, or fettucine Alfredo at Italian places. There was comfort in those familiar dishes, no surprises, no disappointments, and nothing to throw away if she didn’t like it.
The fluffy show, which came on every night at 6:30 P.M. on local channels, was the closest she could stand to watching or reading or listening to anything that might possibly be construed as “news.” Kim Kepler, like her mother, Katherine Kepler, avoided the news. The two women couldn’t bear to hear of little children being abducted from their families. It hurt too much, and brought back too many memories, because Kim’s own youngest brother had disappeared when he was only six years old. She just never knew when a horrible story like that might get broadcast, or put in the newspapers or magazines, and bring it all back, and make her cry, and ruin her day. There seemed to be an epidemic of child abductions in the United States, especially by parents, so those stories were commonplace. But she tried very hard to avoid them, without being conspicuous about it. If anybody where Kim worked ever tried to talk about a story like that, she made excuses and quietly walked away from the conversation.
It was too personal, too painful, even after twenty-three years.
But Entertainment Tonight always seemed pretty safe to Kim.
It was all about movie stars, TV stars, gossip, and no missing children.
It helped her relax to watch it while she ate supper by herself. Not that she was a lonely person. She was gregarious, in fact, with lots of friends, and she was especially close to her mom, and to her younger sister and to a lesser degree, to their other brother.
Kim just didn’t want to hear or see any bad news, that was all.
Lots of people felt that way, and she didn’t apologize for it.
Neither did she apologize for being a midwesterner, although she knew it wasn’t many people’s idea of sophistication. Those same people might think of the Midwest—particularly Kansas—as safe. But to Kim’s way of thinking, that was an illusion. Just look at what had happened to her own brother. And then to her father, who just walked away one day, and never came back. Even so, she had never seen any reason to move away. If Kansas wasn’t safe, then probably no place was. Besides, her mother would never leave, and Kim would not leave her mom.
So there she was, eating off a tray and watching Entertainment Tonight, smack in the middle of the city of Olathe, in Johnson County, Kansas, which was a very long way away from the city of Bahia Beach, Howard County, Florida.
Olathe, the county seat of Johnson County, is the fastest-growing city in Kansas. From the air, or passing by on Interstate 35, it looks like a bedroom suburb of Kansas City, but up close it maintains pockets of its original small-town charm, with little white frame houses with front porches and swings, and large gardens in the yards. The city’s name is pronounced O-LAY-tha, at least by the white people who incorporated it, with the accent on the second syllable. Wild Bill Hickock once lived down the road apiece.
Kim lived in one of those little white houses.
Her mother lived in another one, two blocks away.
Her sister and her sister’s family lived one suburb over, in Lenexa, and their remaining brother and his family lived only a twenty-minute drive away in Prairie Village.
Kim listened as Mary Hart said on the television, “In Florida, a plot thickens! A massive manhunt is under way for an escaped killer who is the main character in a real-life crime story soon to be published by best-selling author Marie Lightfoot. Just when Lightfoot thought she already knew the ending of her book, the killer escaped from the Bahia Beach courthouse two days ago. He had just been convicted for the abduction and—”
Kim reached for her remote control.
“—murder of—”
She fumbled with greasy fingers to find the off button.
“—a six-year-old girl, Natalie Mae Mc
Cullen. Her killer—”
Frantically, Kim pressed the button, but nothing happened. Sometimes it didn’t work the first time.
“—who is known only by the name Raymond Raintree—”
When Kim Kepler heard that name, she felt as if somebody had swung a mallet at the center of her chest. She gasped, and jerked in her seat, and cried out as if she had been hit with ferocious force by an invisible enemy. She clutched her chest, and couldn’t breathe. Her head filled with a loud ringing. She felt dizzy, and her vision darkened at the edges, as if she were suddenly going blind. The remote control device dropped from her fingers, bounced onto the wooden TV tray, and then onto the carpet. The back of it broke open, spilling out both of the AA batteries. Kim’s mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, but no sound came out.
Frantically, she tried to listen to what the TV announcer was saying, but the pounding of the blood in her ears made it hard to hear. The sound of her own breathing deafened her. All she heard was a tag line, “—a movie deal already signed, but now nobody knows how this story will end.” When she saw them move on to other stories, Kim brought her hands to her mouth and stood up so fast that the TV tray tottered on two legs and then dipped over, spilling her dinner.
“Raymond Raintree,” she whispered in a shaky voice.
And then Kim screamed, and screamed again. She began to cry, and then to run like a wild woman from room to room of her little house, wringing her hands, beating her fists and her palms against the walls and the door frames. “Oh, my god, oh my god!” Had she heard it, had she really heard that name? “What should I do, what should I do?” She screamed it over and over, feeling as if she were falling down a well with no handholds, falling, falling, with no end in sight.
“Mama!” she screamed, inside the empty house, and then, falling to her knees on the floor beside the telephone, she whimpered, “Johnnie!”
Raymond Raintree was the name that her little brother Johnnie Kepler had given to an imaginary playmate when he was six years old. She had never forgotten that name, and she had never heard it again from anybody except her own mother, until now. Did this terrible man, the one who had escaped in Florida, have something to do with the abduction of her brother twenty-three years ago?