Searching for Ray Ferrier

(A Sam Snoop adventure)

 

Scene one: Ray Ferrier House; Day Time

 

Sam Snoop pulls his car up in front of Ray Ferrier’s home. The garage is open showing a disabled Ford Mustang and a collection of tools. Crime scene tape flutters in the wind.

Beach Boys little Deuce Coupe plays on the radio as Sam turns off the engine and gets out.

Standing in front he looks one way then the other. Then sees a neighbor (SMITH) approach

 

SMITH:

            Can I help you with something, mister?

 

SAM:

            Is this where Ray Ferrier lives?

 

SMITH:

            Lived.

            Who knows where he is now.

            The police think he’s dead.

            What’s your interest in him?

 

SAM:

            I’m a private eye. My client wants to know where he went.

 

SMITH:

            My guess he went off the deep end, killed his kids, and them himself.

 

SAM:

            I’d still like to look around

 

SMITH:

            For what?

            The police have been all over this place.

 

SAM:

            They may have missed something.

 

SMITH:

            Best my guest.

 

(Both men climb the steps and enter the building – Smith continues to talk as they move through the apartment)

 

            They guy gold out of here one night, dragging his kids with him. He was ranting about the world coming to an end or something

            At first, I thought he was talking about terrorist, and I got scared.

            But when he said it was something else, I knew he was nuts.

 

(Sam looks around, picks up various items, then puts them down again.)

 

SAM:

This place feels like a morgue.

 

SMITH:

            Yeah, it gives me the creeps, too.

            Let’s go look out back.

 

(They move into the kitchen where Sam pauses again, look at the table littered with auto parts and at the refrigerator full of kids’ paintings and a union letter.)

 

SNOOP:

            Ray belonged to the LIA?

 

SMITH:

            Among other things.

            He took up a job at the docks after he washed out as a pro ball player.

 

(Sam and Smith step out onto the porch where the seat of a car leans against a bench littered with more auto parts)

 

SAM:

            You would think from all this he was a mechanic.

 

SMITH:

            He was pretty much a jack of all trades.

            I thought he was a regular guy until the night the storm hit.

 

SAM:

            Storm?

 

SMITH:

            You must have heard about it.

            Twenty six lightning strikes in one place.

            Knocked out power out all over the area. It was all over the news.

            I saw Ray out in the yard playing ball with his kids.

 

(Sam and Smith make their way down the porch stairs to the yard where Sam looks around)

 

            That’s when he broke the window.

 

(Sam steps into the small room and recovers the baseball from the floor)

 

            Say, if you really want to know more about the guy, you should go down to Harrington’s service station and talk to Manny. They used to be friends until Ray flipped out and stole his van.

 

 

SCENE 2: Harrington’s Gas Station.

 

(Sam Snoop and Manny are standing in front of the garage)

 

MANNY:

            I’ve been all over this with the police.

            Just thinking about him makes me angry,

            And to think I used to admire how good he was with cars.

            I don’t blame him.

            I blame that crowd he hangs out with down at the Anchor Inn.

            They’re the ones who drove him to this.

 

 

SCENE 3: Anchor Bar, Iron Bound section of Newark, day time.

 

Snoop is at the bar where Dawn is bartending. Julio and Vincent are seated nearby.

 

VINCENT:

            Everything went to hell the night of that bad storm.

 

JULIO:

            One minute Ray was demanding his quarter back because he tilted the pinball machine, then the next minute he’s screaming about monsters from the deep and sun spots.

 

DAWN:

            I told the police I thought I saw Ray later when I went to see my sister in Connecticut.

            At least I saw someone who looked like Ray on the ferry at Athens. He even had two kids who looked like his.

            But when I called out to him, they all jumped off the side.

 

VINCENT:

            You might want to talk to Ray’s ex-wife.

            If any body knows him, she does.

 

JULIO:

            Yeah, she lives up the Turnpike somewhere with her new husband

 

 

SCENE 4: The New Jersey Turnpike, day time

 

(Sam is driving. Little Deuce Coupe is playing on the radio. A strange sound like a ship’s horn sounds. Sam frowns, looks in to the rear view mirror. An alien machine shows in the mirror.

Sam looks concerns, then glances up again. The machine isn’t there.

 

 

SCENE 5: Mary Ann’s house, twilight

 

Sam and Mary Ann are standing at the front door.

 

MARY ANN:

            Of course, I don’t know where he is – or my children.

            I’m not angry with him so much as concerned.

            Ray has always been irresponsible, but not like this.

            I don’t believe any of those things the police suggest he might have done.

            Rays loves our kids as much as I do. He wouldn’t intentionally let them come to harm.

 

SAM:

            When’s the last time you hear from him?

 

MARY ANN:

            Not since we dropped off the kids the night of that terrible storm.

            But I heard from my son, Robbie by cell phone after they fled Newark.

            Ray brought the kids here looking for us. But Tim and I had gone to Boston to see my parents.

            Robbie said Ray was acting strange, and even made the kids sleep in the basement before deciding to drive north to meet us in Boston.

 

SNOOP:

            Ray went to Boston?

 

MARY ANN:

            If he did, he didn’t meet up with us.

            When we got back here, one of my neighbors said Ray was talking about monsters on stilts and death rays.

            Ray apparently intended to take the back roads north to avoid being spotted.

 

SNOOP:

            This may explain why he was seen at the Athens ferry

 

 

SCENE 6: Athens, NY, Evening.

 

(Sam is sitting before the sheriff’s desk. The Sheriff is seated behind it.)

 

SHERIFF:

            If it’s the same guy, he was real trouble while he was here.

            First, he rams his van into a telephone poll.

            Then he pulls out a gun on another driver.

            After that, he forced his way onto the ferry with his kids after the crew told him there was no room.

 

SAM:

            It is true that he jumped from the ferry?

 

SHERIFF:

            We were never able to confirm it, though some kids said they saw some bodies floating down stream.

            We searched the river side and found nothing.

            My guess is that the bodies floated down into New York Harbor.

 

SAM:

            Could they have made the other shore?

 

SHERIFF:

            It’s possible I suppose

 

 

SCENE 7: The Athens Ferry, night

 

(Sam stands on deck looking back when he hears the sound of a fog horn. Two tripods appear on far shore. Sam rubs his eyes and they are gone)

 

 

SCENE 8: County Road night

 

(Sam stops at a rail road crossing to read the map. Hears sounds, flash light shows mail boxes. He drives on, turning the road way at a fork with a sign pointing the other way to Boston)

 

 

SCENE 9: Farm House, night

 

(A suspicious farmer holding a rifle glares at Sam through a screen door)

 

FARMER:

            What do you want?

 

SAM:

            I seem to be lost

 

FARMER:

            I’ll say you are. This is private property

            If you don’t want me to sick the dogs on you, you’d better get.

 

SAM:

            Fine.

            Give me directions to Boston, and I’ll be on my way.

            I’m from New York

            If the streets aren’t numbered, I hopelessly lost

 

FARMER:

            You’re from New York

(He lowers the gun)

            I used to drive an ambulance in the city before I came up here.

            Never saw so many comings and goings from that neck of the woods until recently.

            The last folks through here hailed from Newark.

 

SAM:

            Was that a man named Ray in company of his son and daughter?

 

FARMER:

            You got the name right.

            But he only had his daughter with him.

            He said he got separated from his son, but intended to meet up with the boy again in Boston.

            I felt so sorry for the poor fool I offered to let him stay the night

 

SAM:

            When they left, which way did they go?

 

FARMER:

            Can’t rightly say.

            Something spooked him in the middle of the night and he fled with the girl.

 

SCENE 10 Road to Boston, night

 

(Sam drives along the road and a military convoy passes him going the other way. Soldiers shout for him to turn around.

The radio repeats a broadcast of an old air raid warning.

When he turns that away, he comes on Tony Bennett song: if I ruled the world

He turns that away to come up with beach boys, and he turns the radio off

His head lights reveal a sign for Boston, but it seems overgrown.

The ship horns sound. He looks into the rear view mirror.

Tripods show in the mirror.

He steps on the gas.

Headlights illuminate a man and a girl, and he steers away just in time but bangs into a telephone poll.

 

SCENE 11: Boston Medical Center, day

 

(Same opens his eyes. His face is bandaged. A doctor leans over him.)

 

DOCTOR:

            So you’re awake finally.

            You’re a lucky man, Mr. Snoop..

            If a Good Samaritan hadn’t brought you in when he did, you wouldn’t be alive

 

SAM:

            A Good Samaritan?

 

DOCTOR:

            He wouldn’t give his name

 

SAM:

            Did he have a small girl with him?

 

DOCTOR:

            And a young man as well.

 

SAM:

            Is this Boston?

 

DOCTOR:

            It certain is.

 

SAM:

            Thank God.

 (He closes his eyes again)