Face Value

4. Countdown.

           I swiveled my head in all directions, scanning my surroundings quickly. The crowd of busy-bodies in the twilight of the evening,  seemed to hide no suspicious faces. There were no figures darting across the rooftops or into derelict alley ways. This mysterious parcel seemed to have materialized out of thin air.... at the foot of my front steps... and minutes after I had re-entered my home. 

There was no denying the precision--the calculation and planning behind this seemingly innocent gesture. 

Someone could see me but I couldn't see them and that was unsettling. What kind of game is he playing?

    I turned my attention back to the little package wrapped in brown paper. I tucked the bloody baseball bat that was wrapped in the plastic bag and picked the parcel up. A string of slender rope cord was tied around the it, probably for decoration because there was clear tape visible  around the corners.  It weighed next to nothing in my hands but I was careful not to shake too much. There was a possibility that it was some kind of explosive. Instead, I ran my fingertips lightly along the surface of the package. On the underside of the wrapping paper, I felt something.

       It felt thin and loosely attached to the package. A look revealed that it was a sheet of paper. Another note. 

   The handwriting was the same elegant East-European script from the first present. It definitely belonged to someone who had spent years perfecting it through years of practice and classical training. Upon reading the message, some of my fears dissipated. 

"Don't worry Crusoe, its not a bomb. Just something to, as you American would say, 'jog' your memories. 

   You'll need to remember if you hope to find her."

    Remember.... He wanted me to remember. So his motive for kidnapping Alice is rooted somewhere in his past and somehow, I fit into that. This person certainly new me well enough to know that Alice was the perfect bargaining chip to get whatever it is he wanted. 

       Whatever was in this package was supposed to give me an idea of who had arranged for my wife to be taken. But I couldn't possibly stand here any longer, outside my front door to open it up. The longer, I stand here, the greater the likelihood of a somebody: a neighbor or a passerby on the street, remembering that they saw me last at the crime scene when someone eventually stumbles upon Donald's body. So I headed for my car, a white Dodge Charger and popped the back trunk. There was a piece of black tarp covering a small combination lock box and I pulled it out. The bloodied murder weapon took its place under the tarp. After closing the trunk, I headed to the driver side of the vehicle. Cautiously, I gazed around the neighborhood; my eyes darting over the brownstones across the street and the tiny corner store that was run by Raul, a man from Dubai whom I'd become well acquainted with in the 8 years that I lived here.

     A figure seated near the bay window of the local coffee shop caught my attention. A pair of dark brown, almost black eyes set in an equally dark brown face, locked with mine. He was a man that I had never seen before but he seemed very aware of me and who I was. The man's clean-shaven face was expressionless, devoid of any emotion and he quickly turned away me. As he rose from his seat, I was able to see that he was dressed in a grey pin-striped, and presumably expensive Italian suit. He gingerly exited the establishment with a grey suitcase swinging in his left hand and crossed the adjacent street without a second glance in my direction, disappearing into the crowd within seconds. 

   For a few seconds, I continued to stare after him. The confrontation, or rather lack thereof, was unsettling to say the least. Anyone else might have written the man off as a merely an observant stranger but there was something in those eyes: there was a degree of insightfulness that dispelled any notion in my mind that this was again another 'coincidence'. 

   Was he the mole? --My perp's spy who I assume was suppose to remain inconspicuous? Maybe he had left the parcel on my doorstep. Maybe he had seen me re-enter my apartment and alerted whoever had faxed me the would-be ransom note. But if this was the case, why reveal himself so boldly to me? Was this to intimidate me or did they really believe that finding Alice would be such an impossible task for me that it didn't matter if I was aware they were watching me?

Or maybe that was the game in and of itself. Maybe this mystery man wanted to be caught  and maybe he actually wanted me to discover Alice's whereabouts. But then why go through the trouble of kidnapping her if he had no real intentions of keeping her?

    The more I pondered the days events, the less things made sense but I was literally wasting valuable time. I climbed into the car. Resting the combination box on my lap, I began unwrapping the mysterious package. Wrapped in the brown paper was what looked to be a some kind of journal. I ran my fingers over the inscription on the leather cover. "Arabic..." I murmured, recognizing the familiar markings. Flipping through the pages, I found that they were covered in the same text. I hadn't read or spoken Arabic in nearly a decade, translating whatever was written down on these pages would take time; hours most likely and I didn't have hours to carelessly devote to chasing clues that did not necessarily guarantee a definitive lead. 

  I glanced at the digital clock in the car: 8:15 pm. In fact, I had less than 69 hours with barely any idea of who this person was and what he wanted with me. I was becoming increasingly frustrated. I had less than three days left to find her; less than three days in which Alice could be suffering and he wanted me to translate what looked to be years worth of personal thoughts in order to find a single lead. 

I was a detective and trained hostage negotiator : I wasn't willing to gamble with anyone else's life; let alone the life of the one person that meant the most to me in the world. 

    "Okay you son of a bitch,"I murmured, tossing the leather-bound journal into the passenger seat and put my keys into the ignition. "I'll follow your trial of breadcrumbs. "