The Moment He Vanished (Kendra Dillon Cold Case Thriller Book 2)

by Rebecca Rane

  Kendra tried to imagine what that would have been like for a little boy, alone.

  “How old was he?”

  “They said he was probably five or six, but it wasn’t easy to be exact. Maybe younger. He’s always been small. And he didn’t know his birthday, his name. They said he could talk, though, I didn’t see it at first. He was maybe kindergarten level. We just assumed five or so. We went with five when he started school.”

  “And no parents came forward, no background?”

  “No, in fact, it wasn’t until he was here for a month that I even got him to talk. For a while, we were worried that he had severe developmental delays. Though I could see in his eyes, he was smart, he just needed time. And a safe place.”

  How many people would open their home, out of the blue, to a street kid that could barely talk, with goodness knows what kind of background? Not many. Not many at all, Kendra thought. She made notes as Tim Wagy relayed his memories to her.

  “What do you think about the Ethan Peltz stuff?”

  “I know he thinks he was abducted. It sort of came back in a flood the last few days. I’m just trying to help him process it. Trying to figure it out myself.”

  “I have to tell you, Margie Peltz believes him to be her long-lost son.”

  “The meeting went well then.” Tim Wagy shifted in his chair. It was hard to read his emotions. Was he threatened by a new parent in his only son’s life? Was he relieved to learn his son had possibly found his mother?

  “It did. He appears to know things that only Ethan would know.”

  Tim nodded, and Kendra watched him look off into the distance, away from their kitchen table conversation. “He had problems, you know, and I just hope this helps some of them and doesn’t lead to, well, anything worse.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  Tim took a beat, and didn’t answer, but then seemed to pick his words carefully. “Things you brace for with kids who’ve lived through trauma. He’d act out when he was little, ripped up his coloring books, other kid’s papers in school. It was just a little defiance. Sometimes, he’d — well, that’s not for the podcast.” Tim Wagy pulled back on his stories. “I’m so proud of him. He had a rough start, and here he is, finding his real mom, solving this thing.”

  “I wonder if you have documentation I can see?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, adoption papers, just a few things to verify dates.”

  “I can look, but a while back, we had a leak. A lot of the stuff was ruined with water. Had to toss it out. But I do have this here.”

  Tim Wagy stood and walked only as far as the refrigerator. He slid a magnate over and placed an official document in front of Kendra.

  In black and white, with the official embossed logo, was a birth certificate for Josh Wagy, birth Mother and Father unknown.

  Kendra took a picture of it with her phone.

  “See, more official than some president’s, eh?” Tim quipped, and Kendra ignored it.

  “Do you think it’s true that he’s Ethan Peltz? He seems to know things that only Ethan could know,” Kendra said.

  “You know how Marilyn Monroe was an orphan or something? I read once that Marilyn thought Clark Gable was her dad. That story popped into my head.”

  Kendra wondered why Tim would relay that story.

  “But those details, there’s no way to explain that other than that he’s Ethan,” Kendra pointed out.

  Tim Wagy shrugged. He didn’t have an answer for it any more than Kendra did. It had been enough for Margie. But Margie wanted it to be true, so it was.

  Kendra believed she’d seen a reunion, not two delusional people. She hoped that’s what she had on tape.

  “Well, I guess that’s all I need, for now. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. Is there anything else our listeners should know?”

  “Look, Josh is a good young man. I don’t mean to make it sound like anything else. With his issues at the beginning, that’s to be expected. Fostering is so important. It changed both of our lives.”

  “I understand.”

  “I just worry that he wishes his life was a fairy tale. We probably all want that at some point. I am praying that the memories he has are true, that he is Ethan Peltz.”

  “Did Josh have any good friends I might interview? Just on the background. Classmates?”

  “Some, you’ll have to ask him. He was quiet at BES. He didn’t run around with neighbor kids either. He’s happy on his own, he’s a loner, which is how I am too. I understand that.”

  BES was the local elementary, Birmingham Elementary. From this neighborhood, Josh would have attended BES, McKinley Middle School, and then Port Lawrence East High School.

  “Thank you, I appreciate it.”

  Kendra put her digital recorder in her bag as she made her way out of the Wagy house. She hoped that the fairy tale Josh believed was true too, for Margie more than anyone else.

  She left Tim Wagy with mixed feelings.

  He loved Josh, believed Josh, but was worried that Josh would be crushed if it wasn’t true. That was a normal reaction, she supposed, in an abnormal situation.

  Kendra was worried too. She’d staked the podcast on believing Josh.

  More importantly, she’d given Margie Peltz hope.

  Dangerous hope.

  Chapter 15

  He checked on her location.

  East of Port Lawrence.

  The tracker was working.

  He had no idea what possible reason she’d be in East Port Lawrence for, but it was who she was, a hard little worker.

  She was probably interviewing some freak, or loser, or deadbeat about her latest lost cause.

  It was her dogged determination to fix things for victims that made him love her even more. It was naïve and childlike.

  He didn’t have time to follow her down all her dark alleys. She was wary when she did that. It was more satisfying to unnerve her when she felt safe.

  Placing the chip in her glove box had also yielded a little treasure.

  He’d taken her little emergency kit. She had pepper spray in her bag, in her desk at work, in her condominium, no doubt, but the one in her glove box was now in his little trove of items.

  At some point, she may reach for it, and it will be gone.

  He smiled at the thought of her eyes widening in fear at that realization.

  He placed his tapered finger on the red dot as it moved again.

  Whatever dirty business she’d needed to take care of was over. He saved the address in his contacts.

  He’d delve into it later.

  When he had time.

  The tracker almost made this too easy.

  Perhaps it was time for a different challenge, or at the very least, a diversion.

  Maybe he’d start killing her interview subjects, randomly, for his own amusement.

  Or not. That would be a mess to clean up. He hated messes.

  Chapter 16

  Kendra and Shoop planned to nail down episode two while they waited for confirmation about Josh’s identity.

  “We’re going to start with the interview with Margie and then go into every single lead that the sheriff gave us,” Kendra said.

  “And then the end is the big reveal,” Shoop said. She added jazz hands for effect.

  “I think it’s the big tease. We let the listener know we’ve got the reunion, but then we leave the interview with Josh for episode three, culminating with the DNA test results.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, do you want to give away the whole thing in the middle of the season? Shouldn’t that be the grand finale?”

  “No, because honestly, that’s not our mystery now. Our mystery is what happened, who took him,” Kendra said.

  Kendra was operating under the theory that Josh’s DNA was going to come back as a match to Margie. There wasn’t a thing that suggested otherwise.

  They got to work picking the best moments of Margie Peltz's story. Her pai
n and loss were her identity.

  They wrote the episode and let Margie’s interview drive the narrative. They stepped out of the way and let a mother tell her story.

  The listeners usually liked the big twists when they uncovered an obscure clue, but Kendra felt the best moments of The Cold Trail were the moments when you could understand what a long-forgotten victim was feeling. The headlines may have faded, but the pain was still there.

  You could hear it in every breath Margie took.

  By early afternoon, Kendra felt they had crafted an episode that honored Margie’s story and recognized her pain and regret for looking away, even for a second.

  Kendra knew about that regret; she’d felt it herself.

  In the first moments of her own kidnapping, regret washed over her. When her kidnapper dragged her away from what she knew. No one talks about the regret. A victim’s regret.

  Why did I go alone?

  Why didn’t I walk with my sister?

  Why did I look away from the sidewalk and out to the street?

  Those things mingled with the fear of realizing you were in danger. Even if it wasn’t your fault, regret was hard to stomach.

  Those memories informed her as they finished the script for the episode. Kendra had to use what she knew about being the victim of a similar crime, not run from it. She knew that for Margie Peltz, regret was mixed together with the grief.

  Even the most random tragedies force the victims to ask questions. Why did I turn left instead of right? Why didn’t I leave five minutes earlier? The questions linger like a fog on the horizon. No matter how much time has passed.

  A few hours after lunch, Kendra entered the recording booth.

  Episode Two – Margie’s Story

  “I felt the moment he vanished, in my bones.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like one moment, I was standing there, bored, hot, impatient for the theme park day to be over. I was so ready to sit by the pool. That’s what I was focusing on. And then in the next moment, the air shifted, or I felt Ethan’s fear like it was a tangible thing.”

  Margie Feltz is a mother. She will always be a mother.

  What happened to her, to borrow a cliché, is a mother’s worst nightmare.

  A waking nightmare she’s lived year after year.

  One minute her son was there. Next minute he wasn’t.

  Margie has lived every moment since the moment Ethan vanished with fear, regret, and sorrow. The cocktail of emotions has sapped the life out of her eyes.

  It’s left her withered and wary at the same time.

  “It’s like falling off a cliff and seeing the ground hurtling toward your body, ready to break it. You’re bracing for it. But you never quite hit. It’s just always ready to smash you to bits. And the effort of holding yourself together, for the impact, rips you apart in another way.”

  In this episode, we’ll take you through the story through the eyes of a mother. And we’ll start to outline the suspects and circumstances in the disappearance of Ethan Peltz.

  Who took the little boy?

  And to our surprise—shock, really—in the middle of the season, we have a meeting to take you to.

  The question we all had is, was it the first meeting, or was it a reunion?

  This is The Cold Trail. I’m Kendra Dillon.

  After Kendra finished taping, she hustled back to their offices.

  Josh had agreed to look at the list of suspects the sheriff provided. He was so young when he was kidnapped, but who knew, maybe one of them would ring a bell.

  “Well, how was it?” Kendra asked.

  “She’s all I imagined, what a mom should be,” Josh said.

  “I’m glad. She’s been through so much,” Kendra reminded Josh. She wasn’t ready to call him Ethan; other than Margie doing it, no one else was changing any names yet.

  “I know, I just want to be sure to protect her. Don’t worry about that. She’s been hurt. I understand.”

  Josh was sweet. She could see that. His concern was real, for the woman he believed to be his mom.

  He’d spent all yesterday with Margie and thanked Kendra and Shoop over and over for helping pave the way for that. Even though he’d promised to wait, it looked as though the happy outcome he’d searched for had happened already.

  He was calm, helpful, and wanted to unravel what happened just as much as they did. This was a first, having a victim, or purported victim, help them navigate through the weeds of the cold case.

  Kendra and Shoop outlined for Josh a list of the credible tips and suspects that the sheriff had provided. “So, first up, this guy Broderick Church.”

  “Church was a drug addict, weirdo, ex-con. The rap sheet says he beat his girlfriend, served time for petty theft, and was about to be facing a new trial for new charges, this time for dealing, not just using,” Shoop said.

  “He was working his way to up bigger and bigger crimes,” Kendra said. “He was in Sand Point, according to the sheriff’s records. He could have done it.”

  They had to show Josh every photo they had. They had to try to see if something obvious was in the case files, now that they had the victim.

  They’d tacked a map of Sand Point’s 2005 layout on the wall and put a pin and picture of Church on the wall. He’d been in Sand Point at the time; they knew because he’d been arrested for a DUI three days before the abduction.

  “What a prince,” Shoop said.

  “But the problem is, he wasn’t a pedophile, that we know of. He didn’t plan any of his crimes; he was a hothead. Snatching a kid in broad daylight and getting away with it requires more thought than Church had ever shown in his criminal career.”

  Josh stared at the old mug shot.

  “He’s ugly, scary, and I’ll tell you what, no little kid would go willingly with him. They’d run from him.”

  He was right. Kendra knew, too, that more frequently than not, kids weren’t snatched away by the boogie man, like she’d been, but rather lured into something they thought they wanted. Like Ethan likely had been.

  “Do you remember a kid luring you or something like that?” Kendra asked Josh.

  “No, there’s still nothing, other than the ride,” Josh said.

  Shoop and Kendra pushed forward. They showed him a dozen photos, he studied them all.

  Finally, he stopped at one.

  “This guy, I maybe have seen him before?”

  Kendra looked at the photo Ethan pointed to. Shoop came over.

  “Hold on, that’s uh… Charles Borgine,” Shoop said as she flipped through the notes she’d made on all the possible suspects.

  Kendra put her finger up to Shoop. She didn’t want to influence whatever it was about Borgine that had struck a note of memory in Josh.

  “Have you seen him?”

  Shoop rifled through the files as Josh considered the photo.

  “I maybe have seen him but, well, I can’t be sure.”

  “Charles Borgine, the mailman. Convicted on four counts of possession of child pornography. He’s currently behind bars,” Shoop said.

  “There was news coverage of it,” Kendra said. Josh might have seen news coverage not the man himself.

  “Do you remember anything about the actual moment?” Shoop asked him, for the second time.

  “I, uh, no. I wish I did. I wish I could help put whoever did this behind bars today. To see what Mom has gone through, it’s maddening.”

  He’d graduated from Margie to Mom quickly, Kendra observed.

  Kendra leaned forward.

  “Don’t stress out over it.”

  The last thing Kendra wanted to do was blame a victim. A little boy who’d been kidnapped and then dropped into a completely different reality shouldn’t have the responsibility to solve the case.

  “How about this: Can you tell us what you do remember, your first memory of your life? We need it for the show, and maybe it’ll help you remember something this isn’t,” Kendra said, pointing to the q
uestions and dead ends they were pursuing represented all over the whiteboard.

  “Yes, good. Yes, I think that I can do that if you think it will help.”

  “Can’t hurt.”

  They decided to go to their recording studio. The audio quality would be pristine. That was always a plus.

  They put on mics, and Kendra began.

  “I remember them changing my shoes.”

  “What?”

  “I know I was snatched from the park. I know I was mad about the Astro Blaster ride. I know that. But the thing that sticks out is that they changed my shoes.”

  “Theme parks tell their employees to be on the lookout for shoes when kids go missing,” Kendra added, remembering what Sheriff Meriwether had told her.

  “Right, I learned that later, that a lot of kidnappers will dress a boy like a girl or a girl like a boy, but the turnstile employees are supposed to look at the shoes. Kidnappers rarely change a kid's shoes, too hard to do that fast.”

  “But they did, in your case?”

  “Yep. Ask Mom. I had Hercules shoes, and they took them away from me and put these generic tennis shoes on me. I wanted my shoes. I was worried about that.”

  “That would lead me to think that whoever took you knew what they were doing. That they knew to get out, they’d have to walk you right past the park employees on the lookout for you.”

  “Yep, I remember thinking they would hurt my mom and dad if I wasn’t a good boy.”

  This was another classic tactic.

  “Did they tell you that?”

  “I don’t remember, I don’t even remember walking out. I just remember the shoes. I hated those shoes.”

  “Can you see the face of the person who took you? Dark hair, light hair?”

  “There’s a Detroit Tigers ball cap, I see that.”

  A million people in Sand Point on any given day would be wearing a Tiger’s ball cap. The detail wasn’t much help, and it also would have obscured whatever face or hair details the young boy might have been able to garner from his memory.

  “What do you remember next?”