The Mystery of the Vanishing Victim, page 5
part #33 of Trixie Belden Series
“Well, you can read me a story after breakfast, anyway,” Bobby told Honey amiably.
“I’m not sure that I can, Bobby,” Honey said. “Sergeant Molinson is coming over to talk to us this morning, so I may not have time. I’d like to read you a story, though. I promise I’ll do my best to make the time.”
“You always do your best, Honey,” Bobby said approvingly. “Trixie doesn’t always do her best, and Mart doesn’t always do his best, and Brian doesn’t always—”
“Bobby, why don’t you pass Honey the scrambled eggs?” Helen Belden asked, interrupting another possibly endless list.
“Okay,” Bobby said cheerfully.
“I hope Sergeant Molinson gets here right after breakfast,” Trixie said, rushing to get a word in before Bobby started up again. “Now that I’m awake and thinking again, I’m already starting to get antsy.”
“The sergeant is usually prompt,” Mrs. Belden said. “I’m sure he won’t keep you waiting if he can help it.”
“I hope he can tell us something about the stranger’s condition,” Honey said.
“You won’t have to wait for Sergeant Molinson to find out about that,” Brian told her. “We called the hospital before you two were up this morning.”
“Oh, Brian, why didn’t you tell us? What did they say? Is the man all right? Can we visit him?” Trixie demanded.
Brian wrapped his arms around his head as if protecting himself from an avalanche. “Whoa!” he shouted. “The hospital said he was in serious condition, which is better than critical but not as good as satisfactory. In other words, he’s not in immediate danger, but he’s still pretty badly hurt. The only visitors he can have right now are members of his immediate family. And the reason I didn’t tell you
I’d called was, I suppose, that I knew I would be letting myself in for the very barrage of questions that I got.”
Trixie waved .away Brian’s last comment impatiently. “If the hospital is only allowing him to see his immediate family, then they must have found out who he is,” she said.
“As a matter of fact, they haven’t,” Brian said. “When I said I wanted to check on the condition of the hit-and-run victim who was brought in last night, the woman on the phone asked me if I knew who he was.”
“Sergeant Molinson told me last night that one reason he wouldn’t be coming over until today was that not finding any identification on the man had caused him a lot of extra paperwork,” Mrs. Belden said.
“Then I don’t understand,” Trixie said. “How can the hospital say that only immediate family members are allowed to visit, if they don’t even know who the man is?”
“Never underestimate the convolutions of the bureaucracy,” Mart Belden said. “Undoubtedly that phrase is part of the administrative patois, a rationale meant to soften the disappointment accompanying the denial.”
“Would somebody translate?” Trixie asked, looking as perplexed as she felt.
“Mart means that the hospital has thought up some stock phrases that sound like good reasons for saying what they say. Just telling me I can’t visit someone is too abrupt. Saying I can’t visit because I’m not immediate family sounds better, and it would make sense in most cases,” Brian said.
“This isn’t most cases,” Trixie pointed out.
“If the hospital had to teach the volunteers a separate response for each case, volunteering to answer the telephone would turn into a full-time job,” Mrs. Belden said sensibly.
“Whoopee!” Trixie shouted.
“We have just heard a response of the type commonly denoted the ‘non sequitur,’ ” Mart Belden said sarcastically. “However, there is, I predict, a rationale for it that my sibling deems rational.”
“You bet there is,” Trixie said. “When Moms mentioned the hospital volunteers, I remembered that I’m a volunteer there, too. In fact, my day to work as a Volunteen happens to be tomorrow.”
“I have a feeling that our stranger is going to get a visit from someone outside the immediate family, whether or not he or the hospital likes it,” Brian said.
“Oh, I’ll ask permission to see him,” Trixie assured him. “But even if they say I can’t visit, I’m sure I’ll be able to get more information, once I’m there, than we can over the phone.”
“Sergeant Molinson may have some answers for us, as well as some questions,” Honey said.
“Oh, woe! We’re right back where we started, waiting for Sergeant Molinson,” Trixie said.
As if on cue, the front doorbell rang.
“I don’t think we’re waiting anymore,” Brian said as he pushed back his chair.
“Why don’t you four go into the den?” Mrs. Belden said. “Your father and I will clear the dishes.”
“Can I go to the den, too?” Bobby Belden asked.
“No, Bobby, I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Honey said. “Why don’t you go up to your room and decide which two stories you want me to read to you after the sergeant leaves?”
Bobby frowned for a moment, but he found it hard to be stubborn in the face of Honey’s promise. “Okay,” he said, his frown turning to a broad smile.
“You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?” Trixie said as she and Honey walked to the den. “If you give him that much time to pick out two stories, he’s going to find at least a dozen that he ‘really, really’ wants to hear.”
“I’ll gladly read him a dozen stories, if I have time,” Honey said.
Trixie shook her head. “It doesn’t seem fair that I, instead of you, wound up with a little brother. You’re so much better with Bobby than I am.”
“Well, that’s at least partly because I don’t see him every single day,” Honey reminded her.
In the den, Mart and Brian had already taken their places on the couch. Sergeant Molinson was standing in front of the fireplace. For a moment, Trixie wondered if he was going to remain standing while he questioned them, like a detective in a mystery novel. But the sergeant sat down right after Trixie and Honey did.
“My first question,” the sergeant began, “is whether anything ever happens in this town that you young people aren’t involved in.”
Trixie felt herself beginning to blush, and she stared down at her shoes. It was true that, time after time, when Sergeant Molinson was finishing unraveling a case, he found the Bob-Whites ahead of him. “At least this time you can’t accuse us of trying to keep anything from you,” Trixie pointed out. “We called the police station immediately after the accident.”
“I’m very grateful,” the sergeant said wryly. “It was nice of you to want to share this case with my humble department. Now, would you mind repeating your story about what happened last night?” Brian, grinning at the sergeant’s gibe, began the story. He sobered as he described the green van. “It plowed right into the stranger and kept right on going,” he concluded.
“About the van,” Sergeant Molinson said. “Did you get a license number?”
Brian shook his head. “I’m sorry. It all happened too fast.”
“I understand,” said the sergeant. “What about the driver?”
Brian looked at Mart, Trixie, and Honey, who all shook their heads. “We can’t help you there, either,” he told the sergeant. “It was fairly dark, and the headlights blinded us.”
Sergeant Molinson sighed heavily. “All right. Let’s back up to the victim. What can you tell me about him?”
“He obviously knew a lot about cars,” Brian said. “In fact, he told us he did. He said they’d been his livelihood, so I guess we can assume he’d been a mechanic or an automotive engineer at some time.”
“But he didn’t tell you his name,” the sergeant stated in a tone of frustration.
“No,” Brian said.
“Did he have any sort of accent that would tell us where he came from?”
“No,” Brian replied helplessly.
Once again the sergeant sighed.
“He told us where he was going, though,” Trixie said. “That is, he asked us for directions to Glen-wood Avenue.”
“There are a lot of houses on Glenwood Avenue,”
Sergeant Molinson said. “There are also two restaurants, a laundromat, and a drugstore, as I recall. He could just have been going to one of those places to meet someone.”
“Well, it’s something,” Trixie told him.
“Yeah, it’s something. It’s a lot of work for my men if I decide to have them check out every place on Glenwood. Well, I’ve made a note of it, anyway. Anything else?”
“After the man was knocked down, and while we were waiting for the ambulance, he said something. He said, ‘Can’t. Can’t... stop. Find. Find the... miser.’ ” Trixie repeated the words exactly as the man had said them.
“Find the miser?” Sergeant Molinson repeated.
“We think that’s what it was, but we’re not sure,” Honey said. “There was that pause between ‘find the’ and ‘miser.’ He might have meant it all to go together, or he might not have.”
Sergeant Molinson nodded and jotted something in his notebook. “Well, that might be something we can use. Is that it?” He looked around at the four young people.
“There’s something else,” Trixie blurted. She stopped and looked pleadingly at Honey, wanting her friend’s encouragement to tell the others her theory. Honey nodded slightly, and Trixie continued.
“Last night, after we got home, I kept thinking about the accident. There’s something that bothers me about that van. The way I put it to myself was that it ‘came out of nowhere.’ ”
“That’s how it seemed, all right,” Mart said quietly as he, too, remembered the scene.
“Well, as I thought about that, it seemed to me that a van speeding toward us from blocks and blocks away wouldn’t give that impression. But a van that was parked, with its headlights off, just a short distance away, would seem as if it just started toward us suddenly.”
“You mean you think someone was parked nearby, waiting for the stranger to cross the street so he could run him down? Trixie, that’s ridiculous!” Brian said.
“It isn’t ridiculous!” Trixie said hotly.
“All right, then. We’ll just call it farfetched,” Brian replied.
“What’s farfetched about it?” Honey demanded. She’d been willing to admit her own doubts to Trixie privately, but she wasn’t about to see her friend’s theory scoffed at.
“Well, for one thing, a van pulling out of a parking place at a high speed would have made even more noise than a van barreling straight down the street. We would have heard it,” Brian said.
“That would be true if he’d been in a tight parking place,” Trixie said. “But those streets were deserted.
He could have just pulled ahead slowly, with his headlights off, until he was right on top of us.”
“All right,” Brian said. “I’ll concede that point. But the stranger walked toward us from the opposite direction. How would the driver of the van know the stranger was going to cross the street right then?”
“I’m not saying he did know that,” Trixie said. “What if the driver of the van was following the stranger? He saw the stranger stop to help us. He wanted to keep an eye on the stranger, but he couldn’t do that if he pulled over directly behind us—and, of course, he couldn’t just leave the car in the middle of the street. So he circled the block, or a couple of blocks, and pulled over on the opposite side. He saw you pointing toward Glenwood, and he figured the stranger was about to start walking again. That’s when he started pulling slowly out of the parking place. Maybe at that point he didn’t intend to run him down. Maybe he was just going to keep following him. Then, for some reason, he changed his mind. He gunned the engine and turned on the headlights, thinking the stranger would be blinded by them and confused. Then he ran him down.”
“You paint a vivid picture, Trix, but it just doesn’t hold up,” Brian said. “Why was the stranger being followed? Why did the driver of the van decide to run him down—especially right there, the only spot for blocks where there would be witnesses?”
“I don’t know,” Trixie said miserably.
“We can alleviate strain to our credulity, albeit intensify that to our psyches, if we assume that the vehicle was on a random but longitudinal course and we were not cognizant of it,” Mart said.
“You mean you think I’ve made up this whole story because I feel guilty about not having seen the van in time to warn the stranger about it?” Trixie asked.
“It would be more comfortable that way, wouldn’t it?” Mart asked simply. “I think we all feel a little guilty about what happened. The stranger stopped to help us, and then we stood by and watched him get hit by a car.”
Honey started to cry. “Oh, that’s exactly how I feel, Mart! But I didn’t know it until you said it.”
“I guess I do feel that way, too, Mart,” Trixie said. “But I don’t think I made up that story to make myself feel better.”
“Well, I’d say you folks have no reason to feel guilty,” Sergeant Molinson said. “It wasn’t your fault. It was the driver’s—and the victim’s, too. Neither was watching where he was going.
“I can’t say I buy your story that the hit and run was intentional, Trixie. But here’s something important for you to remember: Hit and run is a crime, whether it’s premeditated or not. For that reason
alone, we’ll put plenty of manpower into finding the driver of that van. Once we find him, we’ll be able to find out whether there’s some connection between the driver and the victim. If there is, we can start to determine whether the driver had a motive for running the victim down Trixie smiled weakly at Sergeant Molinson. “Thanks for taking me seriously,” she said.
“Speaking of the connection between the driver and the victim,” Brian said, “have you been able to find out who the victim is?”
Sergeant Molinson shook his head. “He had no ID whatsoever on him, and he hasn’t regained consciousness long enough to tell us who he is. We took a set of fingerprints, though, and we’ll see what the FBI can tell us about those.”
“You mean you think the man is a criminal?” Trixie asked.
“Not at all,” Molinson said. “It isn’t just criminals who have prints on file with the FBI. Their victims often do, too. Some government employees are on file. So are people who worked in defense plants during the war. These days, with all the terrorists taking hostages all over the world, some international companies urge their top executives and their families to be fingerprinted, for identification in case of abduction. And there are many more reasons why people get fingerprinted.”
“I hope you can find out who the man is. He might have a family. There might be people miles away who are worrying about him right this minute,” Honey said.
Remembering the directions the stranger had asked for the night before, Trixie thought, Those people might he much closer than we think.
The House on Glenwood Avenue ● 5
WE’LL DO OUR BEST,” Sergeant Molinson promised, closing his notebook and standing up to leave.
“We know you will,” Trixie told him.
The sergeant paused and peered down at the sandy-haired teen-ager. “We’ll want you to do your best, too. You’ve made a good start by notifying the police of the accident immediately and by telling me everything you know this morning. I’d like you to keep up the good work, as they say. No holding back. Is that a deal?”
Trixie nodded dumbly, aware once again of the trouble she had caused the sergeant in the past—and aware, too, of his genuine concern for her safety.
“The extent of the criminality involved here warrants the involvement of the constabulary,” Mart proclaimed. “If our sibling sleuth decides to doubt that, we will gainsay her.”
“Thank you, I think.” Sergeant Molinson looked quizzically at Mart, left the den, and walked out through the front door.
Just as the front door closed, there was a knock at the back door. Trixie opened it, and Jim stepped inside the kitchen.
“The gang’s all here, I see,” he said, looking around at his fellow Bob-Whites. “I was beginning to feel absolutely abandoned at home. I decided to come over and get filled in on what happened last night—and to remind everyone that we ought to be putting signs on the Model A this very minute.“
“Gleeps!” Trixie shouted, clapping her hand to her forehead. “I’d forgotten all about our rummage sale. We’d better get going!”
“First things first,” Jim said firmly. “You owe me an explanation about the events of last night.”
“And I owe Bobby two stories, which I’m going to go and read to him right now,” Honey said. “I hate to keep going over the story of the accident time after time,” she added, almost apologetically, as she hurried up the stairs.
Sitting down at the kitchen table, Trixie, Mart, and Brian told Jim the details of the breakdown of the car, the meeting with the stranger, and the hit-and-run accident.
When they finished, Jim’s eyes were clouded with worry. “I feel sort of responsible for what happened,” he said. “After all, Mr. Burnside told us that the car was temperamental. It was stupid of me to just take off in the station wagon. I ought to have driven along behind the Model A, to make sure you made it home all right.”
“There’s no way that’s your fault, Jim,” Brian told him. “I took responsibility for getting the Model A home. If I hadn’t been so sure I could handle it, I would have asked for an escort. So it has to be my overconfidence that’s to blame.”
“I think we’d just better stop blaming ourselves,” Trixie said spiritedly. “Sergeant Molinson said so just a few minutes ago. The driver of that van is responsible. We’re not.”
“This is a different kind of responsibility, Trixie,” Jim said. “I’m talking about the fact that the four of you were alone and frightened on a deserted street, and that you witnessed a really horrible accident. If I’d followed you in the station wagon, that might not have happened. Perhaps it wouldn’t have prevented the hit and run directly, though—especially if, as you say, the driver hit the victim intentionally.“
