Chapter 25: What Nancy Found Out

Nancy didn’t have to turn around to know that Mugs Barnette was holding a gun on her.  She was only too familiar with him, after their run-in up in the city.  His words on that occasion came back to her, like an unwanted houseguest that wouldn’t leave.

“Next time, some of these girls get hurt too.”

“Keep your hands where they are,” Barnette said.  “Now, get up and walk out of the library with me, staying just ahead.  Don’t try any tricks, because I won’t hesitate to shoot.  We’ll look like a nice father-daughter duo as we wander out.  If you try to signal for help, all you’ll do is give a death sentence to whoever notices.”

“Oh, really?” said Nancy.  “The boss wouldn’t like it.”

“The boss isn’t here.”

That was a good argument, and Nancy rose up and left her chair.  To anyone who didn’t know the two, it did look like just a father and daughter were walking out.  Barnette cracked a smile, thumped the girl on the shoulder a couple times with his right hand, even told a joke on the way out.  He didn’t look like a tough mug to everyone around—but Nancy knew better.

Her worried eyes flicked to the librarian who’d helped her out, but she received no help from that angle.  The woman was busy talking to a high schooler who was attempting a report on World War II.  They were too engrossed in the computer catalog to notice what was going on.

Nancy knew if it were the Norman Public Library, there’d be a police officer on duty.  But it wasn’t the Norman Public Library.  It was the Chickasha Public Library, and criminal activity was rare there.  Particularly abductions at gunpoint.  No one there would recognize one if they saw one—which is exactly what everyone did see if they were paying any attention.

“Good job,” Barnette spat out sarcastically, as they walked down the front steps.  “My car’s the silver one, across the street.  You’ll get in first, and—”

“Excuse me,” said a girl, who’d just come running up, “but aren’t you Coach Grayson—”

“No!” spat Barnette, who prodded Nancy onward.

“Oh, but you must be,” said the girl, hurrying up in front of him.  “You coached my sister on the women’s golf team last year at high school.  I couldn’t forget what you looked like.”

Barnette stopped in his tracks and regarded the girl with a look of disdain.  “Missy, if I look like your sister’s golf coach, he must be extremely good-looking.  I, however, am not him.  Now, go find someone else to—”

He wasn’t able to get the last word out before a tire iron conked him over the head.  Nancy whirled around, in time to see—

“Frank!”

Her brother grinned at her.  “We were just parking when you two walked out.  I figured you didn’t just decide to go on a ride with Barnette, so I grabbed the tire iron out of the trunk.”

“Did he hurt you at all?” Auburn asked.

“No, but he might’ve, if you hadn’t come up with that story,” said Nancy.  “Only, women’s golf?  Who in the world has a women’s golf coach?”

“You’d be surprised,” said Auburn.  “It’s big at some schools.  I don’t know anything about it, myself—it just happened to be the first thing that popped into my head.”

Zach and Ashley came running up at that moment.  “Everything alright?” Zach asked.

Nancy nodded gratefully.

“I’ll go call the police,” said Ashley, darting inside the library.

“We’ll make sure Barnette’s safely behind bars,” Frank said.  “Then, it’s off to Lawton, I guess—”

“No!” exclaimed Nancy.

“Huh?” Frank looked at her.  “Don’t you want to find the cars?”

“They’re not in Lawton,” said Nancy.  “I know exactly where they are!”

Ashley was inside, but the other three all gave her startled looks.  “You do?” they cried.  “How?”

Nancy held up the book.  “We’ve had it wrong the whole time!  Take a look at Chapter 13,” she said, flipping the book open.  Soon, three pairs of eyes were reading over her shoulder.

“Forgotten, but Not Gone,” Auburn read a heading aloud.  “‘The Strange Cases of Cincinnati, Rochester, and An—Ana—Anadarko?’  Where in the world is that?” she asked.

“Anadarko?” said Frank.  “That’s only twenty miles from here!  What does the book have to say about it—”

“I’ll show you,” said Nancy, flipping to the correct page.  “‘Perhaps the most surprising one is in Anadarko, Oklahoma,” she read.  “Unlike Cincinnati, it was fully built, but unlike Rochester, passengers never rode it.  In the late 1960s—early 1970s, Boeing entered the mass transit market when they were asked to build systems for the cities of Boston and San Francisco.  As they had no prior experience building mass transit cars, they wanted a test facility where they could experiment with their equipment.  Anadarko, Oklahoma, was chosen as the location, and a fully-functioning system was built completely underground, running all over the town and complete with three actual stations.  Unlike the similar experiment in Morgantown, West Virginia, Boeing never opened the Anadarko lines up for revenue service.  Instead, they used the network of tunnels for crash simulations, testing their products for safety and training rescue crews on how to respond.  The location remained open through 1979, at which point Boeing, having left the mass transit market, no longer needed to run tests there.  Though abandoned ever since, the tracks and tunnels still remain.  Only five thousand people live in Anadarko, but they are all set should they ever decide they need a subway.”

Nancy closed the book and turned around.  Her friends were speechless with amazement.  Frank was the first to break the silence.

“A subway in Anadarko,” he said.  “And not the food kind.  Who would’ve thought of that?”

“Car thieves,” replied Auburn.  “And kidnappers.  I guess we know where we’re going next!”

“You got that right!” said Frank.  “It’s the end of the line for them now!  We’ll show this gang a thing or two!”