Stolen Away

“Jesus, Ellis,” I said, finally betraying my feelings. “A confession a drunk gives in exchange for a drink isn’t worth the empty glass. And keeping a guy in a dark cellar for eight days makes the rubber-hose treatment seem like kid gloves.”

Parker’s smile had disappeared. He looked at me hard. “We don’t have time for social niceties in this case, Nathan. The New York cops beat up Hauptmann, didn’t they? That bastard Welch third-degreed Violet Sharpe into a bottle of poison. That fella Curtis from Norfolk got the crap kicked out of him. If that’s the rules of the game, and we want to play the game, maybe even win it, well, by God, those are the rules we’ll play by.”

I shook my head. “Can’t argue with logic like that.”

“Anyway, Wendel did break down, on the sixth day,” Parker said, defensively. “Bawled like a baby and tells his story from beginning to end.”

“What exactly was in his confession?”

“How he made those three interlocking ladders himself with wood he took from a church being constructed in Trenton. Put stockings over his shoes and a laundry bag around his neck, and gloves on his hands. When he went up the ladder, he broke a rung, big fella that he was, and knew he couldn’t come back down with the baby around his neck like he planned. The baby was fast asleep in its crib and he rubbed paregoric on the baby’s lips to keep it sleeping. Then he put it in the laundry bag, sneaked downstairs and out the front door.”

“No inside help? What about Violet Sharpe, or Whately the butler?”

“Didn’t mention ’em. I think the Sharpe girl was involved, myself, but so far he hasn’t said so. Anyway, he took the child to his house in Trenton where his wife and two children helped care for the kid. But he says a week later, the kid fell out of its crib and fractured its skull. So he took the baby back and buried it in the woods just a few miles from its home.”

“That’s it? That’s the confession?”

“Well, it’s far more detailed, of course.”

“It’s bullshit, Ellis!”

“Eyes on the road, son.”

“Eyes on the road, my ass. Wendel’s done everything he can to conform to the state’s ridiculous lone-wolf theory—which the state never believed in, in the first place. And what about your own theory that that kid in the woods wasn’t Baby Lindbergh?”

“I know,” Parker admitted, “I know. That’s why we’re working to get a better confession.”

“Oh, Jesus. Ellis, you’ve outsmarted yourself. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, Wendel really is guilty. Really did mastermind the kidnapping, and either sold Capone on the idea, or was put up to it, by Capone. Wendel had to think your deputies were mobsters looking for a fall guy to make a phony confession! A fall guy willing to go along with the scam, to keep himself out of cement overshoes.”

Parker was looking out the window at passing farmland. “Wendel’s father was German, you know.”

“Oh, really. That’s pretty goddamn incriminating. So was my father. Where was I, March first, 1932?”

“He says in his confession, he wrote the ransom note trying to sound like an illiterate or a foreigner. So of course, with his German heritage, the notes ended up sounding German. Those symbols he signed the notes with, by the by, were off the cover of a law book.”

We were approaching the rolling grounds of the insane asylum. I was ready to check in.

We pulled up to one of several free-standing bungalows, away from the main institutional buildings. A chill wind whistled through skeletal trees. Lonely figures in sweaters and slacks walked the grounds aimlessly; male nurses in parkas were keeping an eye on the mental children. We walked up a gentle slope.

“Ellis, how long have you been keeping Wendel here?”

He paused to relight his cigar. “Near three weeks. He’s here of his own free will. He signed a paper to that effect.”

“Right. How did he end up here, Ellis?”

He began to walk again; it was just cold enough for the smoke of his breath to mingle with that of the stogie. “Well…after he wrote his confession, the first one, that is, my deputies asked if there was somebody he could trust, somebody he could send the confession to. And of course Wendel chose me.”

“You knew him well enough to know he’d do that?”

“I predicted his psychology every step of the way. Then my men waited a couple of days and dropped him in Mount Holly and he came up to my house and rang the bell. He told me about the mobsters who’d held him and I told him we’d better hide him out for a while. I suggested New Lisbon as a good, safe place. Like I said, he’s here of his own free will.”

“Well, perhaps I’m mistaken,” I said, pointing to the uniformed guard in front of the small frame bungalow, “but isn’t that an armed deputy?”

“Sure is,” Parker said. “Wendel’s been under armed guard since the first night. You see, I broke it to him early on, that after I read the confession the ‘mobsters’ got out of him, I believed he had committed the crime.”

“But that as his friend, you’d help him as best you could.”