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

by Rebecca Rane

  Frank Drager was now the manager of North Slope Golf and Ski. It was a golf course that wanted to be a ski lodge, too, except for the obvious problem of not having a mountain range within a hundred miles of Port Lawrence.

  Kendra drove out to the resort and had to give the developers an A for effort. They were trying to build a mountain where a garbage heap once stood.

  Well, if not a mountain, they had an impressive hill.

  Frank Drager was waiting for Kendra to arrive. He’d been pleasant on the phone, happy to talk about his former student. He waved at her from his office as she parked.

  This was encouraging. At least one thing was working out.

  Kendra had done a bit of research. Northern Slope was trying to be the next Mount Trashmore. The original Mount Trashmore was a resort and manmade mountain in Virginia Beach. The manmade part was a mountain created from compressed trash.

  In Virginia, Mount Trashmore was a model of landfill reuse and one of the most popular parks in Virginia Beach.

  Port Lawrence’s version was not, but not for lack of trying. Northern Slope had one very big hill, and Kendra had heard, from friends, that on really hot days, the smell of garbage wafted down the “mountain.”

  Well, they were trying.

  Frank Drager had offices in the clubhouse that doubled as a ski lodge or was supposed to, if they could get anyone to ski there.

  “Hello! So glad to meet you. I’m glad you called today, our weekends are very busy, but weekdays, well, that’s the only time I can get a moment,” Drager said, but Kendra had a hard time believing that was true. On a cold day winter day, the resort was empty but for about two or three dozen skiers meandering down the one hill.

  “Can we sit somewhere and talk?” Kendra got her recording device out, and Drager nodded.

  They made their way to his office. He sat at his desk, Kendra across from him. Kendra had put a mic on his gold polo with a Northern Slope logo.

  “I’m happy to help, but it’s been a few years since I’ve had many questions about Wings. That was a great place. It’s such a shame,” Drager said, as he settled into his chair.

  “What happened?”

  Kendra could see that Drager thought she was there to do a story about the charter school, not about one of its students.

  “The embezzlement, gosh, what’d it finally come out to, something like two-point-three million dollars. A shame, it was a crime against those kids.”

  “So, the embezzlement, that was by Wayne Black, the founder? He had the legal trouble?”

  “Exactly, it really started as a vision to help the kids that needed the school environment they weren’t getting in public schools. That’s what drew me in for sure. I have a master’s in educational administration. It really was a dream job for me.”

  “And then the financial trouble?”

  Kendra wondered if there was any place in the podcast for this information, but she couldn’t rule it out.

  “Yes, Wayne Black couldn’t see that the money pouring in wasn’t his personal checkbook, and well, it was too much of a temptation. Being in charge of all that money.”

  “Sure, he’s not the first to be tempted that way.”

  “For sure not,” said Drager.

  “Walk me through it a bit. How did it work, setting up a school?”

  “Well, we would use complicated census data, economic indicators, needs for assistance, that kind of thing, to determine where to plant. I planted several.”

  “And Port Lawrence was the last one to remain open?” Kendra asked.

  “It was. Eventually, even payroll checks were bouncing. But before that, well, it was glorious teaching those young minds, providing that safe space.”

  “I was wondering if you remember any specific students.

  “You know, I do. Some… some stay with you.”

  “Do you remember this boy?”

  Kendra showed Drager a picture of Josh. He stared at it, seemed to search in his memories, and then gave it back.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t remember him specifically. We had so many kids at so many locations, at one point.”

  “No, it’s okay. It was a long shot.”

  “What’s a long shot?”

  “Well, I’m trying to do a cold-case podcast on a missing boy.”

  “Is that young man missing? How terrible.”

  “No, no, he’s fine. He went to your Port Lawrence School.”

  “Oh, well, I’m glad he’s okay, but again, by the time I was the administrator here in PL, I had, oh, gee, five other schools to handle as well, spread across the tri-state area.”

  “Wow, sure. No, I get it. I appreciate it.”

  Frank stood and rummaged in a drawer. “Oh, here—I knew I had one or two lying around.” Drager handed her a folder. “These are our marketing materials, really, such a good mission. A shame we couldn’t go on. If I think of anything else, I can call you.”

  Kendra put the old marketing stuff in her bag.

  “I appreciate it. Thank you for your time.”

  “No problem, anything I can do to help. Sorry I don’t remember him.”

  Kendra was disappointed. She’d learned that Josh was a student, that the school focused on economically challenged areas, and that, as was the case throughout his upbringing, Josh hadn’t made much of an impression.

  As she left Drager’s office, she realized why Northern Slope could be a turnoff for people who wanted to enjoy the outdoors in the winter.

  There was a faint smell of rotting garbage that no amount of steaming hot cocoa could mask.

  Chapter 31

  “We still don’t have enough for the next episode,” Kendra said to Shoop as they played back the interview with the former charter school director.

  “Yeah, a kid goes to a charter school, film at eleven,” Shoop deadpanned.

  “But it’s weird they didn’t tell us that, right?” Kendra said.

  “Are you now investigating Josh? He’s a victim, remember,” Shoop replied.

  She was right. Finding out the details of Josh’s elementary school education led to zero revelations about Ethan Peltz’s disappearance. Kendra thought she’d uncover something, find a new way forward, but what she had was a day of interviews that might be a waste of time.

  Kendra stared at the board. That had two dead ends now, not one: what had happened to Ethan Peltz and what had happened to Josh before Tim Wagy adopted him?

  “We’re looking at one little boy’s story that stops at age five and one that starts there. The pieces should fit,” Kendra added, “But they don’t.”

  “Did the charter school guy have any insight we could use?”

  “No, I mean he didn’t really remember Josh, no one does, but think about it: How much do you remember about who was in your kindergarten class?” Kendra said.

  “Oh, I remember Kelly Sanders told me Santa was fake, and John Shirzer was the cutest in the class, and then my best friend Dawn, would cry every single day when our moms dropped us off. Every day! I mean, get over it.”

  Shoop’s roll call of kindergarten put a smile on Kendra’s face.

  “Okay, most people other than you don’t remember that stuff.”

  “We still have a few days, I mean barely, but we have a little time to pull this together. Where do you want me to concentrate?”

  Shoop was unstoppable when she was digging for answers, but right now, Kendra didn’t even know where to aim the shovel.

  “You know Drager mentioned that the school founder got into some legal trouble. Maybe there’s something there. I don’t know if it’s worth an episode. It’s probably way off track, but I think we should at least know what he was talking about before we put his sound on the air.”

  “Okay, I’ll dive into the charter school a little. What’s your plan?”

  “I think I’ll try Tim again. He needs to answer. I mean, why did we have to find out this way about Rising Wings?”

  Kendra had some suspicion about tha
t detail, but also, it could mean nothing. She could be adding mystery to something that wasn’t important.

  She went into her office and dialed Tim Wagy. She was getting annoyed that neither father nor son were answering her calls.

  But this time, Tim Wagy did answer.

  “Hi, Mr. Wagy, Kendra Dillon here.”

  “It’s not the outcome he wanted, I know,” Tim said. This was the first time she’d gotten through to Tim since the DNA test came back.

  “I’ve been calling and calling,” Kendra said.

  “Oh, really? My voice mail doesn’t always work,” Wagy said.

  “You know I believed Josh, and I think he believes what he told us too. It just doesn’t add up,” Kendra replied.

  “What can I do to help?” Tim asked.

  “I wonder if you could remember the name of the social worker, back in the day, who found Josh?”

  “Oh, uh, yes, I think I have that somewhere. Golly, it was Brenda or Barbara? It’s been a while. I’d have to look.”

  “I just want to figure out how Josh got here again. I also crushed Ethan Peltz’s mother. I’m trying to help her, in light of all I did to raise her hopes.”

  “Well, that DNA is the end of the story, isn’t it? I mean for the Peltz part of it, and really for Josh. He had a sad start, but we did give him a happy ending. It wasn’t so bad with me.”

  Wagy sounded hurt. Kendra supposed it was hard, having the person you raised go to these lengths to find a different family.

  “It was, but still, how did Josh know what he knew? Maybe there’s something there that could be of use. Something she remembered?”

  “Maybe, I just worry that all this isn’t good for Josh. He’s holding on to a lie or a fantasy somehow. It can’t be healthy,” Tim said.

  Kendra had expended most of her worry on Margie, not Josh, but his father sounded truly concerned.

  “If you can think of anything, remember your case worker’s name and information it could be a help,” Kendra said.

  “I’ll look around, but you know, she moved away, out of the country actually, years ago.”

  “Well, I need more about Josh’s life. Even a small detail might help.”

  They finished the call, and Kendra came out to find Art in the office, looking over their whiteboard.

  “Where are you two headed with this thing? It’s shaping up to be a real disaster,” Art said.

  “It’s not that bad, we’re on it. We have a few leads, we’re just regrouping after the DNA results episode,” said, Shoop defending their disaster.

  “See, this is why it would have made more sense to wait,” Kendra said to Art, who raised an eyebrow in her direction.

  “Yes, I’ll explain to the power company why we plan to wait on paying our bills, and to the rest of the staff why we’re waiting on paying salaries,” Art countered, in a broad and exaggerated style.

  “But we’re in a corner now, with no idea who Josh really is or where Ethan is, like every other investigation into this,” Kendra said and used her hand to try to rub away the headache that was threatening to blossom into a full-blown migraine.

  Art backed off a little. Kendra knew he believed they worked hard and tirelessly for the victim’s families. He knew they didn’t want to quit. They were stuck in the corner, not throwing in the towel.

  Art looked at their board. He paced back and forth in their office space.

  “You know, these things never happen in a vacuum,” Art said.

  “You mean another kidnapping?” Kendra said. “We looked, not one other missing boy or girl in the Sand Point area in 2004, 2005, or 2006. That would be national news, a string of them. They just don’t exist.”

  “Sure, but maybe they weren’t in the Sand Point area,” Art mused. “You’ve got less than four days to get that next episode together. I know you can do it.”

  Art left them with something to think about.

  “How big was our net?” Kendra asked Shoop.

  Shoop walked over to the map. “We looked at a five hundred-mile radius and nothing.”

  “So, maybe the kidnappers were on vacation, maybe proximity to Sand Point is just a dead end. Maybe there’s another way to look at this?”

  Kendra looked at all the elements on the board, all the things that connected to Josh or Ethan. There didn’t seem to be one through-line.

  “What we know about Ethan, what we know about Josh, we have to see if there’s something to connect them.”

  “You mean any missing kid in 2005?”

  “Let’s take Art’s advice. Ethan Peltz can’t have been the only missing kid.”

  “On it,” Shoop said.

  It wasn’t much to go on. Kendra felt that headache starting.

  She fished in her Coach bag and found some Tylenol. She swallowed down three, hoping to stave off the throbbing. But she knew the throbbing wasn’t physical. It was the realization that they were really grasping at straws.

  Kendra went back to her office. She opened the tip files and looked through the ones the sheriff flagged as credible and the ones that weren’t.

  She re-read the police reports to try to find an avenue that was missed or overlooked.

  She didn’t know how much time had passed when Shoop popped her head in.

  “Any luck finding other missing children reports from the early 2000s?”

  It was almost a rhetorical question, Kendra realized.

  “There were hundreds of missing kids, you know that. But snatched off the streets? That’s another story.”

  Kendra did know. Most missing children disappeared under much murkier circumstances than a stranger with candy.

  “Yeah, it is,” Kendra said.

  “Check your email. We have a tip that came in, a listener. It’s interesting.”

  Kendra nodded, and Shoop went back to the thankless task of painstaking research.

  Kendra popped open the email:

  “I listened to the podcast. I think I might have something for you. I lied to the police when I was a child. My name is Dakota Buck, and I’m probably in those files you talked about on the show. Call me if you think this might be something that could help.”

  Kendra and Shoop always asked if people knew anything about old stories to come forward, to help now, if they could. Every episode, Kendra reminded listeners that they could hold the key to a cold case and not even realize it.

  Sometimes a fresh perspective could be found.

  She rifled through the piles of tips with Dakota Buck’s name fresh in her mind.

  Eventually, she found it.

  Tip Number 544.

  A year before the Peltz kidnapping. A whole year before Ethan’s disappearance, another little boy did go missing.

  The little boy, Dakota Buck, was five at the time.

  Sheriff Meriwether included the old report filed with the Port Lawrence Police in his files.

  Kendra read the initial report:

  The subject’s grandmother called in, claiming concern for her grandson’s whereabouts.

  She does not have custody but is worried that her daughter, who is addicted to heroin, hadn’t seen the child, Dakota Buck, in two days.

  Officers sent to take the report describe filthy conditions at the primary residence. Mother was not concerned, said the boy often stayed with friends but couldn’t name friends.

  The grandmother reported she was considering applying for custody of her grandson but worried she was too old. Told officers:

  “I did not want to believe she was so far gone. But this is it. Little sweet Dakota is dead or kidnapped or other things they say they do to little children.”

  Child Services alerted to the living conditions. APB put out to the Missing and Exploited Children Network.

  A recent school picture was also distributed.

  She looked through the file. A picture of Dakota was paper clipped to the report.

  Dakota looked enough like Ethan to catch Sheriff Meriwether’s attention, as he did
what they did and looked for patterns. He even noted how their young eyes were almost obscured behind long bangs and shaggy mops of hair. Ethan Peltz’s clothes looked nicer, but the hair was the same. Kendra flipped through to the next page of the report.

  Three days after the initial report, and five days since he was last seen, little Dakota showed up again. Unharmed.

  Dakota Buck was found wandering in the Benjamin Gallery Mall.

  He was returned to the care of his grandmother, pending a custody arraignment. The boy says he was lost and wandered away. He claims to have taken a city bus to the wrong stop, and slept on the street, and then used the mall for shelter.

  There are no signs of abuse or injury.

  Case closed.

  Note: Be sure CPS knows that law enforcement will testify on behalf of the grandmother being awarded guardianship from a negligent mother.

  Kendra looked at a final note from Sheriff Meriwether:

  “Repeated interviews, same story. Dakota Buck not kidnapped but lost.”

  Port Lawrence Police took all the reports, but Howard Meriwether was savvy enough to see the similarities.

  This was why it was in his files.

  Meriwether noted that they’d verified what they could of the boy’s story. It was short on details. But he was uninjured, and he maintained that he got on the bus and then got lost.

  Downtown Port Lawrence was too far from Sand Point to ring too many bells. But Art’s words rang in her ears. If there was one, there had to be more than one. Child kidnappers didn’t strike once and get over it; if anything, the appetite for this was only whetted by success.

  Dakota had a Facebook profile.

  She scrolled through.

  He rooted for the Cleveland Browns, poor guy, and went against his buddies and was also a Reds fan instead of an Indians fan.

  Kendra decided Dakota Buck was worth listening to. Hopefully, since he’d reached out to them, he was willing to be interviewed.

  If anything, maybe it could open up the possibility that Ethan wasn’t an isolated incident.

  She called Dakota Buck. He answered on the first ring.

  “Hi Dakota, I got your email. Can we meet now?”