Chapter 12

Dammit, I wondered if Worcester was turning into a copy of Mexico City. We just had another kidnapping! The difference from our point of view was that this time the victim was an adult. She was Mrs. Abigale Hanscomb, the wife of Clark Hanscomb, the owner and manager of the largest credit union in the Worcester area. The ransom was $750,000, not as big as some, but big enough to get everybody’s attention. Mrs. Hanscomb was 47 years old, and a surprising beauty for her age. Hanscomb wanted his wife back, and he was willing to pay our rates for her return.

He called on us because, as usual, the FBI and Worcester Police were getting nowhere. We were grateful to get the job because it kept us from making another trip to New Orleans. As in the old joke from our high school days, “Once a King, always a King, but once a Knight is enough!” Our clients for the New Orleans trip were very gracious in putting off their trip until we had time for them. Hell, with that kind of attitude from our clients, we were morally committed to the trip as soon as we could get away from Worcester.

We were given all of the information that Hanscomb and the cops had, though the FBI refused to cooperate with us. What was with them, anyway? Oh, well, since Nancy and I don’t depend on hours of fancy lab work and that sort of thing, I doubt that the FBI could do us much good. Just like everybody else, they have had their budget cut so much by the lack of tax money that I have felt that they are to be congratulated every time they do solve a case.

We started out the same way that we did on our other kidnapping cases: we asked for help from teens and young adults. We let it be known that the FBI had turned their back on us and this was an opportunity to stick it to the MAN. That perked up a lot of interest that we might not have generated, and we gave out hundreds of copies of Abigale Hanscomb’s photograph. Hopefully, somebody had seen something, and all we could do now was wait. One of the things in our favor was that almost everybody hates kidnapping, no matter what the age or the gender of the victim, so we got a lot of eager help on this case.

We had to wait almost a week before we got anything useful reported back to us, but eventually we did get some helpful information. Somebody had seen a woman with a sack over her head being pushed into a garage next to a house on Lindel Street. Even if it was not Mrs. Hanscomb, the incident was worth investigating.

We had the exact address, so there would be no problem in finding the house. The garage was not attached to the house, so we should not have much trouble with attracting unwanted attention when we investigated the house. Our first step was to drive past the house during the daytime just to verify the layout. We also looked on Google Maps for the satellite picture of the street and the house. All of that gave us enough information to let us visit the house at night.

We dressed in our ninja suits and parked about a block away. There was an alley that ran behind the garage and the house, so we used that for our approach. There was so much light that we did not even need our night-vision glasses for the initial approach, even though we spent as much time as possible in the shadows.

The garage had a rear door opening onto the alley, and that was our first approach point. I picked the lock and we went into the garage. There was enough room for two cars, but only one car was parked inside. Beside that car was a large wooden crate a little larger than a coffin. There were holes drilled in the top and sides of the box, so our first thought was that Abigale was stuck inside that box.

The box top was hinged along one side, and the lid was fastened closed by a hasp held by a combination lock. Most people don’t know that cheap combination locks are easier to open than are key locks, and it only took me a few seconds to have the lock off and the box lid opened. The odor coming from the box was enough to knock your head off. It smelled of piss, shit, and unwashed human. Lying there was a woman who looked resigned to her fate, but was not dead yet.

Nancy woke her and explained the situation; namely, that her husband had hired us to find her. We figured that he deserved the credit, and his wife needed to know that. We helped her to stand, but she was too weak to climb out of the box by herself. Once she was out of the box, that woman showed more good sense than the average person would have—she shed all of her stinky clothes and stood there, filthy and naked before us. Nancy found some rags and wiped her down as much as possible while I tried not to stare at her.

We found out that she was usually fed once a day by a woman. Abigale thought that it was about noon when the woman opened the box, but she had no way of knowing for sure. The woman needed something to wear on her way home, so I opened the trunk lid of the car parked in the garage. There I found an old blanket that had seen much better days, but it was usable as an emergency covering until Abigale had a bath and some fresh clothes.

Nancy took her to our car while I waited in the garage. We didn’t want to attract attention by all three of us marching to our car. Abigale lay on the floor in the back seat to wait out of sight for us to return to the car. Our plan was to enter the house and arrest the people inside for kidnapping. Once we did that, we would call for the police and make our report. We would come back to the car to take Abigale home after we had finished with the cops. She was so happy to be rescued from that damned box that she was willing to go along with anything we asked her to do.

We entered the house through the kitchen door and looked for the bedroom. It was easy to find, and both people were sleeping in the bed. There were two other bedrooms, but neither one was in use, so we figured that we had everybody in the house. There was a third person because Abigale said that she had been taken by two men, but they had worn hoods, so she had seen neither face. That was a problem for the police to solve once we turned in the two that we had captured. I called 911 and got my familiar dispatcher. I told her the situation, and she promised to have somebody out to the house as soon as possible.

We had used nylon cable ties to bind the two people in the bed. Nancy went to join Abigale in the car while I waited for the cops. It took 30 minutes for a cop to show up, but he agreed to let me go on my promise to come around to headquarters along with Abigale and Nancy tomorrow afternoon. That sounded fair to me, so I left for the car to report what I had promised.

They had already called Clark Hanscomb, and he was eagerly awaiting our arrival. I drove Abigale home a fast as I dared, and we watched a very heart-warming meeting of the couple as soon as Abigale exited the car. We waited until they were safely inside the house before we drove home. That was, indeed, a very satisfying close to a kidnapping case!

The trip that afternoon to the police headquarters was a pain in the ass, but it was a Hell of a lot better than the bedlam outside when we exited. The sidewalk and street were covered with reporters and camera crews, and there was an impromptu press conference right there on the street. We broke away at last, but Abigale was so shaken up that she was nearly in tears. Nancy drove her home in the Hanscomb car, and I followed behind to pick up Nancy to go home.

God ... Damn ... It! ... The kidnappers were out on bail within 48 hours because of the traffic jam inside the jails. The judge decided that the overcrowding in the jails warranted letting the kidnappers post bail. She foolishly assumed that they were not a flight risk. Guess what happened. The kidnappers were in Canada and thumbing their noses at the Massachusetts judicial system in less than 24 hours.

The bail bondsman was really pissed, but Nancy and I volunteered our services to him as bounty hunters. We agreed to a bounty of 10% of the jumped bail and set out for Canada to get them back. The kidnappers had headed for Halifax for some odd reason, so we figured that it would be fairly easy to find them.

We could not cross the border with our guns in hand, but I had long ago made a hiding place under the engine hood where they could be hidden. We had our batons, but there was no law in Canada against carrying canes or swagger sticks, so that was what we claimed that our batons were, and we made that silly argument stick. I think that the border-crossing guard sympathized with us.