Blaze

This morbid picture entered his head and wouldn’t leave. A chimney fire from the stove he’d stoked special so Joe wouldn’t be cold if he kicked off his blanket. Sparks sputtering from the chimney onto the roof. Most dying, but one spark finding a dry shingle and catching hot, reaching out to the explosively dry clapboards beneath. The flames then racing across the beams. The baby beginning to cry as the first tendrils of smoke grew thicker and thicker…

He suddenly realized he had pushed the stolen Ford up to seventy. He eased off the accelerator. That was worse and more of it.

He parked in the Casco Street lot, gave the attendant a couple of bucks, and went around to Walgreens. He picked up an Evening Express, then went to the rack of paperbacks by the soda fountain. A lot of Westerns. Gothics. Mysteries. Science fiction. And then, on the bottom shelf, a thick book with a smiling, hairless baby on the cover. He worked out the title quickly; there were no hard words in it. Child and Baby Care. There was a picture of an old dude surrounded by kids on the back cover. Probably the guy who wrote it.

He paid for his stuff and shook open the newspaper going out the door. He stopped suddenly on the sidewalk, mouth open.

There was a picture of him on the front page.

Not a photo, he saw with relief, but a police drawing, one of those they made with Identi-Kits. It wasn’t even that good. They didn’t have the bashed-in place in his forehead. His eyes were the wrong shape. His lips were nowhere near that thick. But somehow it was still recognizably him.

The old lady must have woken up, then. Only the subheading did away with that idea, and in a hurry.

FBI ENTERS SEARCH FOR BABYNAPPERS

Norma Gerard Succumbs to Head Injury

Special to the

Evening Express

By James T. Mears

THE MAN WHO DROVE the getaway car in the Gerard baby kidnapping — and possibly the only kidnapper — is pictured on this page, in an

Evening Express

exclusive. The drawing was made by Portland P.D. sketch artist John Black from a description given by Morton Walsh, a night attendant at Oakwood, a new high-rise condominium tower a quarter of a mile from the Gerard family compound.

Walsh told Portland police and Castle County Sheriff’s deputies earlier today that the suspect said he was visiting Joseph Carlton, a name that is apparently fictitious. The suspected babynapper was driving a blue Ford sedan, and Walsh said there was a ladder in the back. Walsh is being held as a material witness, and there is speculation about his failure to question the driver more closely on his intentions, given the lateness of the hour (approximately 2 AM).

A source close to the investigation has suggested that the Joseph Carlton “mystery apartment” may have ties to organized crime, raising the possibility that the infant kidnapping could have been a well-organized criminal “caper.” Neither FBI agents (now on scene) nor local police would comment on this possibility.

There are other leads at the present time, although no ransom letter or call has been announced. One of the kidnappers may have left blood at the crime scene, possibly from a cut received in his scramble over the Oakwood parking lot fence, which is of the chain-link type. Sheriff John D. Kellahar called it “one more strand in the rope that will eventually hang this man or gang of men.”

In other developments, Norma Gerard, the kidnapped boy’s great-great-aunt, succumbed during an operation at Maine Medical Center to relieve pressure on her (go to Page 2, Col 5)

Blaze turned to page two, but there wasn’t much there. If the cops had other stuff, they were holding it back. There was a picture of “The Kidnap House,” and another of “Where the Babynappers Entered.” There was a small box that said Appeal to Kidnappers from Father, Page 6. Blaze didn’t turn to page 6. The time always got away from him when he was reading, and he couldn’t afford that now. He’d been away too long already, it would take him at least another forty-five minutes to get home, and also —

Also, the car was hot.

Walsh, that miserable bastard. Blaze almost hoped the organization whacked the miserable bastard for blowing their apartment. Meantime, though —

Meantime, he would just have to take his chances. Maybe he could get back okay. Things would be a lot worse if he just left the car. It had his fingerprints all over it — what George called “dabs.” Maybe they had the license plate number, though; maybe Walsh had written it down. He turned this over slowly and carefully and decided Walsh wouldn’t have written it down. Probably. Still, they knew it was a Ford, and blue…but of course it had been green originally. Before he painted it. Maybe that would make a difference. Maybe it would still be okay. Maybe not. It was hard to know.