Title: Catch me if
you can
By
Author: John M. Floyd
Tag line: Angela
Potts wanted to know the whole story about Lizzie Martin’s kidnapping!
Police characters: Sheriff Jones
The gist: Sheriff Jones’s niece is engaged to a criminal
with a past record who is now linked to a kidnapping. Lizzie, the victim, went jogging Wednesday
night and never came back. Security
cameras at her building confirm she did not return home, nor did anyone else
enter her apartment. Lizzie made the ransom call herself to her parents saying
that her abductor had her at gunpoint and demanded two hundred thousand dollars
to be left in a bag at midnight on Friday at Highway 8 and Cypress Road where
there is nothing but swamp and woods, a hard area to stake out.
Lizzie’s shoe was found in her parents’
mailbox. It was a shoe that only Lizzie could have had since
her parents ran a boutique and had just gotten them in exclusively in their
store and Lizzie had taken a pair for herself before they were even put out for
sale. The she had a note that read, “Just
to prove it’s her.” The note was signed COD, which made Sheriff Jones, whiz cop
that he is, to think it was from Clayton Owen Darrow, his niece’s fiancé. Clayton had dated Lizzie for almost a year
and according to Lizzie’s mother Clayton was pretty distraught when Lizzie
dumped him. But a few months later he
began dating Jones’s niece.
When the police tried to find Clayton to speak
to him they learned he was conveniently up in the hills fishing, a spot with no
cell reception. Jones’s niece said Clayton was innocent and that
he dumped Lizzie, not the other way around.
Mrs. Potts
believed Lizzie faked her own kidnapping in order to get money from her rich parents
so she could run away from them, and at the same time get to blame the guy who
jilted her.
What does
Ms. Potts see that Sheriff Jones doesn’t?
Crime scene: Unknown.
Kidnapping on a street.
Clues: The shoe in the mailbox.
Suspects: Clayton
or Lizzie.
Red herrings: None.
Solution: If Liz
had been abducted while jogging she wouldn’t have been wearing an expensive
heel. Her apartment didn’t record anyone
coming to her apartment so the ‘kidnapper’ couldn’t have gone in to acquire the
shoe after the fact.
My two cents: I’m not going to bore
you with a long rant on police work and the fact that Sheriff Jones blabs about
his cases to a civilian, he’s an idiot who never does a decent or proper
investigation, yada-yada-yada. Waste of
my breath. (Minus 1 star for police work.)
Sheriff
Jones is still quite unlikable with his whining and long faces and dejected
manner. I’d like to just slap him. Hard. (Minus 1 star for character development. There was none.)
The clue was
hinky. Nowhere in the story did it say the shoe in
the mailbox was a fancy high heel. It
said it came from her parents’ boutique, that it was expensive and exclusive,
and that Lizzie had grabbed herself a pair before they even went on sale. They could have been pricy running shoes. (Minus 1 star for bad or misleading clue.) I’m not even sure why the ‘kidnapper’ had to ‘prove
it was her’ with the shoe in the first place.
Didn’t Lizzie call her parents and tell them she had been
kidnapped? Duh.
This story
actually read well and the pacing was good, and there was a believable motive earning
this story 2 stars.
Angela Potts
is being mentioned in the tag line now.
I guess she’s the draw for these stories. Go figure. At least she wasn't mean to him. In fact, she was rather tame in this story.
