SNOWY WINTER'S CHILL
By PorscheDsgn
Chapter Four – Frosty Turmoil
Ignoring the officers gathered in the small office, ignoring the pains in his knees from his bent position, ignoring everything around him, Joe Hardy sat with his arms around bent knees, head resting on his knees. He sat despondently, aware that as time passed it would be much harder to find Frank and bring him home safely. The hard plastic chair grew more uncomfortable as time passed but Joe refused to move until he got some more concrete word about his brother's whereabouts or had something solid to do, some way to find Frank and bring him home before Christmas.
A hard knot formed in Joe's stomach as he struggled with guilt and anxiety. The unbidden 'what ifs' refused to leave him alone. What if I came earlier? What if we hadn't fought? What if I hadn't hung up on him when he called. What if I just listened. What if I got here just five or ten minutes earlier? What if I got Tony to help? What if, what if, what if…
"Joe, there's nothing you could have done," Con Riley perched on the edge of the desk again and stared down at him, making Joe squirm slightly. The blonde-haired youth shook his head in denial, clearing images of his brother that formed, accusing expressions clear. Joe blinked up at the detective and shook his head again.
"I should have come earlier," Joe said. "We were supposed to shop together. I should have been here with him instead at home!"
Con shook his head, brown hair dislodging from the neat style Con normally wore. Dressed in black dress-slacks, a button-up-the-front purple shirt and holding onto a long black trench-style coat, Con looked professional. Joe knew the older man fairly well; they tended to butt heads when Frank and Joe took a new case and had to involve the police in anyway. Con never quite approved of Frank and Joe's proclivity to find trouble. Joe heard him more than once refer to the Hardy Brothers as 'trouble magnets, the both of them' but never in a way that meant they were trouble. Just that trouble found them, sometimes when they looked for it and sometimes when they didn't.
"The should have, could haves and what ifs are going to tear you apart if you let them," Con gently chided Joe. "You know that as well as I do. I may not approve of your detective work and sleuthing but I do know you and Frank are both very intelligent – and you're both strong. You know I'm not lying to you here."
Joe sighed and nodded, admitting that the older man was right. He did know.
Did it make Joe's guilt less? No, it didn't.
Because I let something come between me and my brother, Joe thought wearily, wiping his eyes. I let something come between me and the one person I trust more than anyone else – even Iola.
"I know what you're saying Con," Joe straightened his legs and groaned. Too long in one position, his legs protested the movement. "I just can't make myself agree with you. I'll try not to let it get the better of me, though."
"Joe?" Joe looked up gratefully as yet another person came into the crowded office. Fenton Hardy shouldered his way past the cops in the doorway and smiled gratefully when Con stood and cleared the room with one bellow, sending the gathered officers out to start talking to potential witnesses to the kidnapping.
Fenton knelt beside Joe and the young man looked appreciatively into his father's brown eyes. Fenton Hardy was a handsome man – or so Joe had been told more than once by any girlfriend he'd ever had, including Iola. He'd seen girls and women watching Fenton as he walked down the street or through a grocery store, hunger in their eyes. Fenton never saw that hunger, his eyes remained firmly attached to Joe's mother, Laura.
Right now Joe's father looked grim but calm, his hands steady as he touched Joe's hands and forced the young man to match his gaze. Joe wanted to look away, to deny his father what he wanted but instead, the youth set his shoulders and nodded. Fenton asked him what happened in a very gentle voice.
For what seemed like the thousandth time that morning, Joe went through the sequence of events, from his fight with Frank that morning to the phone calls and coming to the mall to find that Frank was already kidnapped.
"I failed him Dad," Joe looked away from his father, not wanting to see the recrimination he knew would be in his father's eyes. He deserved it but he couldn't handle seeing it, not yet. "I should have come earlier. I shouldn't have gotten so angry with him. You and mom were right last night that I was letting what happened to Iola cloud everything in my life. You were right and I didn't see it until it was too late."
Fenton rubbed the bridge of his nose but squeezed Joe's shoulder with his other hand.
"Joe, son, it's not your fault," Fenton said softly. "It's the men who took him that are at fault for this. Can you see in the future now or something?"
Joe shook his head hesitantly.
"So, if you're not clairvoyant and if you're not omniscient, then it can't possibly be your fault. I bet if you HAD known you wouldn't have hesitated to come with him this morning or get here when he first called. You didn't know and this is not your fault. I know it's all too easy to take the blame for everything. Anytime you and Frank have gotten hurt or endangered from helping me, I feel it. But I've learned I can't accept the blame for what bad guys do – and you can't either.
"If we're going to work together and get Frank back, you need to keep your head on straight. You need to be able to think clearly so we can work the clues. Do you understand?"
Nodding, angrily dashing away tears that had fallen, Joe agreed. "I understand. What do we do first?"
"Well, I think we're going to let Con and his officers finish canvassing the mall," Fenton said softly. He didn't feel at all guilty about getting special treatment. With Frank being over eighteen, Con was well within his rights to wait 24 hours before starting a hunt for the young man. It was a testament to how Con and the Bayport Police Department really felt about the Hardy family that Con didn't hesitate to start a search.
"We should go home," Fenton continued. "I have a feeling we're going to be hearing from the kidnapper soon and we need to be ready to receive the call. Let's get home and get the equipment set-up."
Joe pushed up to his feet, totally ready to go home. The sooner he got out of here, the sooner they could track down Frank, get him home and have Christmas together.
They made it out into the main hallway again when one of the officers ran up, carrying a paper bag in a plastic gloved hand.
"Detective Riley!" the officer called out. "I think we found something."
Riley took the bag from the officer and Joe and Fenton followed him back into the office. Riley, his own hands covered with plastic gloves, reached into the bag and pulled out a picture.
Joe's heart leapt into his chest. It was a picture of his brother inside of the trunk of a car and a note was attached to it, addressed to Joe's father. Fenton grimly reached into a pocket and pulled out his own plastic gloves, donned them and took the note from the packaging.
"Fenton ole friend,
It's been a long, long time, longer than I wanted. The time is right though.
You've taken something from me twenty years ago that I want back. Give it to me and you can have your son back.
If your son cooperates, you have exactly one week to retrieve the item in question. I will send further instructions for the delivery of the item. If your son doesn't cooperate you will have two or three days, maybe less, to get this item to me so time is of the essence old friend. If you don't return this item then in one week – or less – your son will die.
You know what I want, Fenton.
It's time to deliver.
Your old friend,
Alistair WinstonFenton sank down in a chair, staring dumbly at the piece of paper and Joe forced his heart back out of his throat. Eyes completely blank as he looked at the sheet of paper, Joe saw his father's hands shaking as he laid the sheet of paper, very gently, back onto the top of the desk.
"Dad? What is it?" Joe asked in a shaky voice. "Who is this guy and what does he want that you took?"
"Alistair Winston is a man I knew growing up. He used to be friends with both your mother and I, back when we were living in Bayside."
"Do you know how to find him still Fenton?" Con asked from the other side of the desk. "Or have you completely lost track of each other."
"We've obviously lost track of each other," Fenton looked up angrily at the police detective then wilted. "It's… it ties into what he wants… why we lost track of each other I mean. Why he had to wait twenty years to get what he wants back."
Fenton looked over at his son and Joe stared into his father's now expressive brown eyes. Joe saw pain and anger there; a deep crease furrowed his father's forehead and Joe tentatively touched his dad's arm. Fenton's hand slammed down on the desk, sending both the bag and the sheet of paper flying in different directions and Fenton leaned forward, burying his head in his hands.
Joe tentatively touched his father's back, rubbing small circles, trying to calm as Fenton had calmed him earlier. Swallowing nervously, he looked up at Con who shrugged, obviously as much in the dark as Joe.
"What does he want?" Joe asked softly.
Fenton said nothing for several moments and Joe wondered if his father even heard him. The worry ignited in Joe like a flame and he struggled for control for a moment, to keep from panicking here and now. What if Frank was already dead? Did his dad think that?
Fenton spoke finally, standing straight again, brown eyes once again more calm.
"Alex Winston, your mother and I were all fast friends growing up," Fenton said softly. "The three of us were part of a small group of about eight that were almost always together at school, talking, rough-housing, playing games… best friends as it were. Alex and I were very close – he was my best friend, the best friend I ever had before I met Sam Radley. He was charismatic, fun and interesting. We talked about going to school together but I already knew I was going to be a cop and he wanted to go to Harvard. He wanted to get a degree in big business and make it big on Wall Street. And your mom and I… well, we were already talking about getting married but I wanted to get out of the Academy and get my own house before we did that. She decided to go to school too – and she went to Brown, majoring in home economics and accounting. You know all that of course. Anyway, Alex did what he wanted to do – and he got married to this beautiful girl. He was different… more different than I thought he would ever be.
He and Veronica got married and had a little boy named Jameson – they called him Jamie – before your mother and I were able to have a child. I got caught up in an investigation and… well, it lead where I never thought it would. Then Veronica ran to me, panicked. She'd seen Alex kill a man, cold-bloodedly put a gun to his head and he threatened to kill her AND Jamie if she said anything. I couldn't believe it but I couldn't allow anything to happen to Ronnie or Jamie. I got them both to the Feds; they put them both into Witness Protection and I haven't seen them since that day. I don't even know where they are.
"That's what Winston wants though. He wants his son, maybe his whole family, back."
Joe found the chair he left only a few minutes before and sank back into it, his legs no longer holding him.
To get Frank back they were going to have to find a man who was now twenty-five and give him up to the father who had nearly beaten him to death when he was five.
