It took a while for the Andersons
to get back to the police station.
First, the exit off of I-240 had to be closed off. Four more cars hit the slick before Anderson
and Rivera made it back to the main road with flashlights, to warn drivers not
to take the exit. Of those four, two
actually did go off the road. Ambulances
were required, but they couldn’t go right up to the accident. Special work trucks had to be brought in to
clean up the mess before the tow trucks could even reach the crashed cars. All told, it was about an hour by the time
the group finally reached the police station.
Five officers were in the main room when the Andersons walked in, and
Mr. Anderson could tell by their faces that the news wasn’t good.
“They lost the truck?” he
asked Rogers, a former Texan who worked the night shift.
The officer nodded. “Yalp.
It’s a durned shame our roadblocks didn’t work. We had I-44 blocked, all
them exits stopped up, and he still gets by!
Ain’t a trace of an Atlas truck all night.”
“Not a one?”
“Walp, the closest we
came was an Allied truck. You know’s
well as I do that it couldn’t have been the same one. Atlas is Rangers colors—Allied is—uh—it’s,
uh—
“Orange,” finished
Frank. “Clemson Tigers.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was
going for. Other than that,
nothing. The road’s emptier than
downtown Normangee[1]
on a Tuesday evenin’—except at the roadblock, where we’ve got them cars all
bottled up. ‘Course, maybe he’s just
takin’ it slowly—”
“No, that wouldn’t be
it,” sighed Mr. Anderson. “He must have
slipped through our fingers somehow.” Sitting
down in his chair, he pounded his desk disgustedly. “If only it weren’t for that oil!”
“At least we know where
he’s going!” Nancy said. “Somewhere
southwest of the city.”
“Did you get a look at
him at all?” Mr. Anderson asked, glancing up at his son.
Frank shook his
head. “I was too busy ducking, but I’ll
remember that voice again if I ever hear it.
Pretty deep-sounding—”
“Any voice would sound
deep compared with that car dealer,” a fair-haired officer spoke up. His nameplate identified him as Evans.
“What happened to him?”
Frank asked.
“Banged up, but he’ll
live,” Evans said. “We’ll interview him
as soon as he comes to, which hopefully won’t be long. Apparently, he knew something about the
gang—”
“I think he knew where
their hideout was!” Frank said excitedly.
“He said something about, ‘They’ll be taking you off to that Subway they
hide—,’ and then the other fellow came in.
I ducked, and—hey, who turned out the lights?”
The others stared at him
questioningly. “Uh, no one, Frank,” his
sister replied. “It’s perfectly bright
in here—”
“No, I mean at the car
dealership,” Frank said. “When I hit the
floor, the lights went out just before the shots were fired.”
“Shooter, mebbe?” Rogers
said. “Keep yuh from seein’ him?”
“No, he would’ve needed
the light to be able to hit Bob,” Frank said.
“The way he wanted to, I mean. Plus,
there was someone else in the room!”
“Someone else?” exclaimed
Evans. “Who?”
“I don’t know,” said
Frank, “but after the shots were fired, the door to the showroom slammed, and I
heard running footsteps. A few seconds
passed before I started to get up. Then,
the door to the lot popped open, and someone else went running out—”
Nancy gasped. “We saw that!”
“Did you get a look at
the figure?” Frank asked. To his
surprise, his father shook his head.
“All we saw was the door
open,” Mr. Anderson explained. “When
Nancy and I reached it, I looked around, but there wasn’t anyone in sight. Whoever came out must have hidden among the
parked cars while we went inside.”
“Unless it’s that dude in
the truck,” Rogers suggested.
“No, that couldn’t be
it,” said Frank. “Whoever took the door
to the lot couldn’t have gotten to the truck that fast. There must have been two people besides Bob
and myself. Oh, if only we’d thought to
look for the second one!”
“They’re probably miles
away by now,” Mr. Anderson said. “Were
they there together, I wonder, or had the second one come for a different
reason? They didn’t leave with each
other, obviously.”
“I think we need to go back
to the dealership and have a look around,” Frank said. “Maybe there’s something we missed.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Four policemen were
already searching the office when the Andersons returned. One of them was a little more familiar than
the rest. A look of surprise came over
Mr. Anderson’s face as he saw who it was.
“Sellers?” he said. “I thought you had the night off!”
His friend groaned. “I thought I did too. Between the Harcourt case and this, Jennings
is calling out every man he can get his hands on. Fortunately, I get to go back to bed as soon
as we finish searching the place.” He
pointed around the room. “Give it a look. Maybe some less tired eyes will spot
something I didn’t.”
Mr. Anderson nodded. “Anything interesting, Bottomley?” he asked
the officer in charge, a tall man with an unusually long mustache that bobbed
up and down as he talked.[2]
“A few items,” the
officer said in a very serious tone. “First,
we managed to identify one of the cars in the parking lot. See that blue Kia Optima, parked under the
streetlight out there?”
The others followed his
pointed finger. Nancy nodded her
head. “Paint looks nice and sparkly.”
“It is,” said the
officer. “That’s because it’s new. Same with the Kia brand and the Sorento
letters. Henderson and Williams both examined
it and figured out it was actually a Mitsubishi Mirage, rebuilt to look like a
Kia. There aren’t a whole lot of
Mitsubishis in Oklahoma, so it was pretty easy for us to find out where it came
from.”
He pulled a piece of
paper out of his pocket, then cleared his throat. “The car’s registered in Wisconsin, but it
was stolen in Oklahoma. Its owner’s a
Marine vet. When he retired, he moved to
Blackwell—”
“Blackwell!” repeated
Frank. “Another connection!”
“Exactly,” Bottomley stated. “It seems that the Blackwell car thieves are
disposing of their merchandise down here—”
“Bigger market for it,”
Mr. Anderson agreed. “Anything else?”
Sellers wandered over and
picked up a book. “Record of all the
stolen cars Bob got. They were half of
his inventory.”
“I’m surprised they
weren’t all of it,” Mr. Anderson said.
“No, I’m not surprised. All would
be suspicious.”
“It’d be a lot more
suspicious if we knew what we were looking for,” Bottomley said. “All the cars got heavily reworked. New paint jobs, new upholstery—part
replacement to cover up any habitual squeaks or perpetually misfiring warning
lights. Henderson and Williams also
spotted two Fords that were really just Chevrolets with different body work put
on!”
“All from Blackwell?” Mr.
Anderson asked.
Bottomley shook his head,
in ignorance. “The book didn’t say, but
we’re checking on it.”
“What about Subway?”
Frank asked. “Any mention of it?”
“Funny you should ask,”
Sellers said. “There was a wrapper from
a foot-long in the trash can.”
“An analysis of the food
particles would seem to indicate it was a spicy Italian sub on multigrain
bread, with Italian dressing as the topping,” spoke up Officer Jacobs, the
forensics man on the team.
“That doesn’t say which
location it came from, does it?” Sellers asked, somewhat sarcastically. “No?
Just wondering.”
“I’d be surprised if it
was the same location,” Nancy remarked, “considering Bob wasn’t supposed to
know about it.”
Frank wasn’t
listening. He’d been staring around at
the walls of the room. Now, suddenly, he
darted over to the showroom door and flicked the lightswitch.
Nothing
happened!
The officers stared at
him curiously. “What did you do that
for?” Bottomley asked.
“Just a hunch,” said
Frank. There were two switches on the
panel, and he tried the other one. Also,
no change. The lights stayed the same.
Darting back across to
the lightswitch by the door to the lot, he then tried that one. The lights went out—then quickly came back on
as the switch was released.
“The switch by the
showroom door doesn’t work,” Frank said.
“That means that the person who fired the shots didn’t turn the lights
out. Whoever did was standing right by
this door.”
“How could they, though?”
Nancy asked. “Wouldn’t you have seen
them?”
“Not necessarily,” said
Frank, glancing around. “There’s a
little room between the filing cabinets and the wall.”
“Not much, though,” noted
Bottomley. “I doubt I’d fit back there…”
His voice trailed off as
he watched Frank squeeze in. “Oof! It’s tight, but doable,” he called, his
muffled voice wafting out from behind the cabinets. “I guess whoever was back here—hello, what’s
this?”
“What’s what?” Nancy
asked.
Frank didn’t answer, and
when he reemerged a moment later, he wasn’t holding anything. However, he promptly hit the ground, then
reached back into the space behind the cabinets. After groping around for a few seconds, his
hand reemerged, holding—
“A keychain,” Mr.
Anderson said, staring at his son’s find.
“A monogrammed keychain.”
“ARD,” read Nancy. “An abbreviation for Ardmore?”
Frank shook his
head. “No, silly. These monograms always have the first initial
on the left, the middle on the right, and the surname one capitalized in the
center. Whoever dropped this has the
initials ADR, and it’s not Bob.”
“Where was it exactly?”
Bottomley asked.
Frank pointed back behind
the cabinet. “Over behind that second
one. You’ll notice it’s made of rubber,
and the little loop that’s supposed to go around a keychain is broken. My guess is that it got caught on something
while whoever was back here was struggling out, and it fell off without their
noticing.”
“ADR was back here,
then,” said Nancy, looking at the keychain.
“Colors are green and yellow. Wonder
who he is?”
“Or she,” said
Frank. “Like I said, I didn’t have much
time to see them. It was impossible to
tell for sure. I do know this, though.” He stared at the keychain. “If we could find ADR, they’d be a big help
in solving this case.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Andersons finally
made it home around three o’clock in the morning. If they thought the rest of their family
would be waiting for them, they were mistaken.
Mrs. Anderson, Louis, and Susan were all sound asleep—they didn’t find
out a thing about the previous night’s adventures until breakfast the next
morning, when Frank filled them in on the details.
Mr. Anderson and Nancy
slept late, but Oklahoma City’s best police officer (at least, that’s how his
family referred to him) didn’t get the day off.
After a hearty meal that would be labelled breakfast if it was eaten a
few hours earlier, Mr. Anderson left for work.
He arrived shortly after noon, then called Frank to give him some
updates.
“Bob came to at four
o’clock this morning. The officers that
interviewed him said he seemed pretty cooperative, but he wasn’t that
helpful. He’d overheard a couple of the
gang members talk about storing cars at ‘the Subway,’ but he didn’t know which one
they were referring to. Besides that, he
didn’t seem to know anything else—names, other dealerships, anything. Not quite as promising as we’d hoped.”
“I see,” said Frank. “Still, the Subway clue seems promising. Has any work been done on that?”
“Been going on all day,”
Mr. Anderson said. “Police across the
city have searched of all the Subways in Oklahoma City—starting around the I-44
corridor, then spreading to surrounding locations. We even had the police in Moore, Edmond, and
the other towns nearby check there’s out.
Nothing so far, but there are a few locations we haven’t checked yet.”
“Well, hopefully
something will pan out,” said Frank.
“How about the other stolen cars?
Have you traced them?”
“Those cars are from all
over the state!” Mr. Anderson said excitedly.
“Five or so were from Oklahoma City, but the others came from places
like Enid, Ardmore, Lawton, Tulsa—we even found one from Altus. They’re all ending up here!”
“All over the state?”
exclaimed Frank. “Did they go missing in
Oklahoma City?”
“No, they went missing in
their towns,” Mr. Anderson said. “We
even have camera footage of one of the ones from Lawton being stolen in that city. These thieves are just transporting them here
to sell.”
“Well, what do you know?”
said Frank. “Funny how ones from Tulsa
are popping up here. That’s a big enough
place to sell a car.”
“The thieves must be
headquartered around here,” Mr. Anderson explained. “Otherwise,
they wouldn’t need to bring their vehicles from Tulsa.”
“I see,” said Frank. “Well, keep us posted.” Hanging up, he told Nancy the news—she’d come
to the living room to see what the conversation was about.
“They’re coming from all
over,” Frank said. “This means the
thefts must be related. Boy, are we
making progress on this case!”
“Yes, but we still haven’t
found Stephanie or Brittany,” said Nancy.
“Not a trace, and finding them’s our most important job! I hope they’re alright!”
[1]
Small town in the part of Texas Rogers was from.
[2] As
Bottomley talked, not as Anderson talked. Just to be clear.
Almost Done Rolling!
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