by Rebecca Rane
“Wow, you sound just like you do in my earbuds, and uh, yeah, sure. I’ll take a lunch break.”
Kendra jotted down the address. Dakota Buck was ready to talk.
Maybe it was something. Maybe nothing.
But Kendra felt the need to pound the pavement, to get out from behind the computer to see if she could turn up anything new.
The story wasn’t going to break open unless she gave every spare second to it.
She knew it was dinner with Big Don night, and she didn’t have the time for it. She felt a pang of guilt, but she was in it now.
Food, family, sleep—it would all have to wait.
On her way to the interview, she called her dad.
“Hey there, famous podcaster, too famous for dinner. Call me the famous psychic.”
“Hi, Dad. How’s the blood sugar?”
“Ha, like it’s a pet. Blood Sugar is good. I gave it a treat today.”
“Dad,” Kendra said with the most Nurse Ratchet tone she could muster.
“It’s fine. Checked it an hour ago. I’m not going to crash today. But I’m right. Right, famous podcaster.”
“Famous, well, I don’t know about that, but The Cold Trail has been pretty lucky two out of two times.”
“You’re the hardest working lucky person I know, don’t sell yourself short.”
“Yeah, well, the story has gone splat, and so I’m going to have to postpone.”
“Yep, a bug on a windshield for sure. How are you doing? Is this bringing up your own crap?”
Her dad was blunt, but he was worried, in his way, like her mom.
“No, I’m fine. Just working to hammer out a way forward with this case. Ethan Peltz’s case, mine, we got tons of coverage, headlines, all that, but what happens if the child isn’t discovered missing right away, or they’re from lower-income homes?”
“Or Dad isn’t a union boss, and Mom’s not a power broker? Yeah, I get what you’re saying. It’s awful.”
“Ethan Peltz, me, we were lucky, in terms of coverage.”
“Yep, do a little digging, kid. Reported cases that get media coverage. But even the FBI says there were over four-hundred-thousand entries for missing children at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Your little sister dropped that fact on me. She’s also canceling dinner, by the way.”
“We’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
Her dad, her sister; if any family knew the numbers, it was the Dillon family. A handful of missing kids made the news. She was in that handful. So was Ethan.
Josh? However he’d started, if he was kidnapped, well, it hadn’t made the news. That she could find, anyway.
“Yeah, plus you have family abductions and sex trafficking. It’s sickening,” Big Don added.
“I was so lucky.”
“Yes, it’s why I still go to Mass. Even after that story you did, they let me in.”
“Dad!”
“Kidding, you rooted out the evil there too. You’re lucky, for sure, but you’re brave, kiddo. Don’t forget brave.”
“Thanks Dad, but it’s not bravery; it’s shoe leather. I have to find other kids, connections, patterns.”
“You will. I’ll give you and your sister a pass this week. You’re both saving the world.”
“Thanks, Dad. And make sure you do the evening blood sugar check.”
“Did I mention you’re a brave nag?”
“Love you.”
The call was over. Her schedule was clear.
Kendra needed to put her shoulder down and plow ahead.
Chapter 32
They were new friends. They played together now.
His new friend got a candy bar from the mean man, and his new friend broke it right down the middle and shared it. The boy let him pick.
The boy wondered if he would have been that nice.
Because that was really nice, sharing a candy bar.
“It’s only fair. I split it, and you pick. That is the only way to keep ya honest. That’s what Dad says.”
The boy’s new friend had a dad before. The boy wondered if the mean man was his dad now. His mean dad.
The boy’s new friend was his best friend! His best friend. That sounded nice. His best friend made sure that each piece of chocolate was the exact same number of squares.
That’s what friends did, give you part of their candy.
The boy watched his friend with the mean dad. The mean dad was giving the boy’s new best friend a hug.
It looked like a hug, anyway.
The mean dad wrapped his arms around the boy’s best friend and hugged him so hard.
At first, the boy looked. He wanted to understand. And once he understood, he wanted to stop looking. But he wasn’t allowed to stop looking.
“This is what happens.” That was what the mean dad said. “This is what happens to boys who don’t listen, to boys who try to run, to boys who cry, to boys who scream.”
But his new best friend didn’t scream or even make a sound.
The man held on tight, and the hug went on and on.
The boy watched his best friend’s feet flick like a goldfish.
It wasn’t a kick like in soccer, just a little tiny fishtail flick.
The boy knew that the mean dad was hugging his new friend to death. He was smashing the air out of him.
Really, like the goldfish, when it was out of the tank, dying.
Chapter 33
Kendra entered The Groundskeeper Coffee House. She’d been there before, but it had been a while. The place was close to her old TV station but a little bit of a drive from downtown Port Lawrence. She scanned the customers as she walked up to the counter.
“Double espresso.” She placed her order and zeroed in on Dakota Buck. She recognized him from his Facebook profile.
He nodded. Dakota also still looked a little like the schoolboy picture in the tip file. Even after a decade.
She paid for her order as the expresso machine spewed her drink into a little cream-colored cup. She could almost hear Scott, her ex-husband, chastise her for the amount of caffeine she was about to imbibe. She ignored him then and now. She’d happily take any dose of superpowers it provided.
“Dakota?” Kendra asked.
“Yes.”
“Kendra Dillon,” Kendra replied and sat in the open space across from Dakota.
“I’m a little nervous. I’ve never met someone famous before.”
He was a few years older than Josh, so nearly Kendra’s age. He wore a shirt with the Ring Tire logo on it. The mystery of where he worked solved.
“Nothing to be nervous about, and I’m not famous famous, just locals know me.”
“Are you kidding? I listen to podcasts constantly and you’re better than Penn Sydney from It’s Criminal. I mean, really.”
“Thank you, that’s very nice.”
Kendra worried that Dakota might be star struck rather than able to provide viable new information on the case.
But since they were fresh out of leads and she basically had Shoop on a futile search for connections that might not exist, Kendra couldn’t afford to ignore any tip.
“Yeah, I listen to crime podcasts because, well, because of what happened —"
“—Do you mind if I record?” she interrupted, stopping Dakota in mid-sentence. If this was a viable piece of The Cold Trail, she’d need it on tape.
“Wow, yeah, I mean, wow. I’m really nervous now,” Dakota said.
“It’s just a conversation.”
“I’m on my break. I should tell you that, across the way, Ring Tire.”
She nodded. “Well, so, let me ask you, why did you call me?”
“I listen to podcasts because, like I said, I was a victim. No one knows it, but I was. I want to be like you, or Serial podcast or something. Solve my own thing.” He looked embarrassed by saying the words.
“Hey, look, Payne Lyndsey solved that case, after decades. It could happen. I mean, I haven’t solved m
y own, but I know where you’re coming from.”
“Yeah, I just don’t have any investigator experience, or podcaster experience or, well, I work at Ring Tire,” Dakota laughed. He had a self-deprecating way about him that was charming, Kendra decided.
“You’re in the tip file. You disappeared for almost a week, the year before the Peltz disappearance.”
“Yes.”
“But over and over, you said you were lost.”
“They told me if I ever said anything, my mom was going to be hurt or killed. So, I made up a story.”
“What really happened?”
“I was a street kid, before my grandma took over, that is. I ran around, scrounged, didn’t go to school one day, did the next. I was playing at this scrubby little playground near my mom’s current crash pad. There was a swing set there and seesaw.”
“Where was that?”
“It was on 16th under the overpass. Lovely area, ha.”
The sarcasm was warranted. Kendra knew it was the opposite of lovely and not a place you’d let a little kid play on their own, even now.
“You told people you got off the bus at the wrong place,” Kendra said.
“That’s a lie.”
Kendra leaned in. She watched as Dakota took a breath and marshaled the courage to tell her something he’d kept hidden for decades.
“You’re not a little kid anymore,” Kendra said.
Dakota nodded in agreement. It was easy to say, hard to accept sometimes, Kendra knew.
“What I was doing was walking along the sidewalk, after screwing around on the playground. A kid my age came up to me. It was classic, really. He told me he had candy, extra candy, and I could have as much as I wanted. Ha, that sounded good, right? So, I followed him to this car and poof! I wake up in the trunk.”
Trunking. Kyle had told her about the sick practice. Kendra had to stop her own mind from racing. She remembered exactly that feeling, of being snatched, of waking up somewhere you didn’t intend.
“What next?”
“So, for three days, I think, this man—a very nice man—took care of me. We had mac and cheese. He was creepy in that I had to get a lot of baths, but he didn’t hit me or anything.”
Kendra was quiet as he relayed his story.
“He told me my mom wasn’t going to keep me anymore, and they’d kill her if I tried to cry to her. Now my mom was a mess, don’t get me wrong, but I loved her.”
“This man, you said he didn’t hurt you?”
“Well, what he did was uncomfortable, but it didn’t hurt. I mean, my mom burnt me with cigarettes.”
Kendra winced at the thought of it.
“Sexual abuse?”
“Yes,” he said, and seemed embarrassed, as though this was somehow his fault.
She hated that it was his reaction, but she understood. If only I had stayed with my sister and my friends.
“You wished you hadn’t taken the candy or stayed too long at a playground. Even now.”
“Yeah, my fault, that stuff is my fault.”
“It’s not.”
Dakota shrugged at her reassurance.
“Did you ever see the other boy? The one with the candy?”
“Yes, he was there for a lot of what happened. It happened to him too.”
Kendra squeezed her eyes shut and reopened them. It was awful. As much as she was wary of Dakota’s podcast fandom, everything tracked. Kendra believed Dakota was telling the truth.
“This man was abusing you, but also taking care of you.”
“Yes, that’s the guilt part too. I had better food, and a nice bed and clean clothes and candy. Some sick shit, isn’t it?”
He pursed his lips into a line and cracked his knuckles. Oil stained his nails. It was what hard work looked like, something she remembered from her dad’s buddies.
“You were a victimized child,” Kendra said. But she knew a world like this. An experience like what he described wasn’t something she could fix.
“Yeah, so, the man who grabbed me, the nice man, he wasn’t the only one. A few days in, when it seemed like this was my new life, another man came. I mean, up to that point, I’d just accepted things. Like this was just where I lived now. If I had to deal with the touching, fine, I would deal with it. I didn’t try to run. But that changed, in a hurry.”
“Because of the second man?”
“Yes, he was going to kill me.”
“How did you know that?”
“I’ve always been street smart. Thanks to mom, eh? Anyway, I knew he was evil. I knew he wanted to hurt me, kill me.”
“Right away?”
“Pretty much, but with the nicer one, I thought I was safe. But the mean bastard took me. He put me in his car, away from the nicer dude.”
“That was what, two or three days in?”
“I think? I was still little, so, you know, that part’s hazy. Anyway, he just had a look in his eye that was different. The first man let me go with this new guy, that was maybe the worst. For a second, I thought, this house will keep me safe. Ha.”
“What happened next?”
“We drove a little. I just knew I had to get out of there. You have to understand that I was passive. I did everything they told me from the second they threw me in that trunk. So, the car door was unlocked. I hadn’t tried to run in all the time I was with them. But the car stopped, and I made a decision to bolt. I opened the door and shot out as fast as I could. It probably shocked him, me fighting back. Shocked me at the time.”
Kendra recognized this instinct. She’d had the same one. When she had the chance, she’d ignored the threats of her own kidnapper and climbed out the basement window. She didn’t know where the strength came from, but she’d done it. It saved her life.
Dakota Buck had done what she’d done.
“Didn’t he chase you?”
“I had the edge. He couldn’t leave a car in the middle of the street, right? Has to park? So, I don’t think he chased me. But I didn’t look back. I just ran as fast as I could. I made turns. I just kept going and going.”
“And eventually, the cops found you?”
“They did, wandering. I told them I had gotten lost, period, end of story. I had no doubt they were telling the truth about killing my mom.”
Dakota picked up his coffee and took a sip. He swallowed it, and Kendra let the silence sit there between them.
“You never saw them again?”
“No, but when I look back, I think one guy was the procurer and the other one, just pure evil.”
“Do you think you could recognize them, the men who did this to you?”
“Yeah, maybe. I remember what they looked like. I remember pretty good.”
“What about the little boy with the candy?”
“Yeah, he looked like the pictures of Ethan Peltz you’ve been sharing.”
Kendra stopped breathing for a moment.
Fifteen years had passed. Kendra wondered, even if this was true, how easily a defense attorney could poke a crater-sized hole in an I.D. of a kid this long after the fact. A kid who’d lied, admittedly to save his family, he thought, but lied all the same.
She exhaled and continued. “Are you sure?”
“No. I mean, you’ve looked at my file. What did I look like back then?”
“Ethan Peltz.”
Kendra remembered that, when Dakota was missing, little Ethan would have been safe at home, with Margie.
“Right.”
“Why call me now? Why talk, why share this story?”
“Because I think that whoever took Ethan took me, and I just thought, maybe, if you had my details something new could shake loose.”
“I need some addresses, where were you playing, where were you when you ran away from the second man, everything.”
“Okay, here’s what I know.”
Dakota Buck gave Kendra every concrete fact he could remember.
Kendra planned to check every single one of them.
; With Dakota Buck’s story still fresh in her mind, Kendra decided to retrace some of the steps he’d made back then.
Maybe walking where he’d walked might help.
She drove to the 16th street location. It wasn’t in any better repair than when Dakota had been kidnapped.
Stephanie Dillon’s revitalizations and community grants hadn’t turned this part of Port Lawrence into a gleaming row of rehabbed historical gems.
She’d done it in other places, but not here, yet.
Kendra spotted the vacant lot that substituted for a park where Dakota played. Kendra walked over to it. She kept her Jeep key fob at the ready and her phone in her hand.
Getting mugged here was a distinct possibility.
Kendra took a few photos. The ground was hard. There was patchy grass, but it was as tough as cement.
Dakota played here to escape. It was better than the home he was raised in. But it was desolate. She couldn’t imagine letting a kindergartener play here, alone.
The idea made Kendra shudder, and as if on cue, the wind picked up.
As it did, a blur of yellow floated past her peripheral vision.
She followed the color and strange shape.
Kendra registered that it was a section of police tape blowing in the wind.
Certainly, the old kidnapping wasn’t the reason for the tape. Perhaps a recent break-in or even a vacant structure fire.
Kendra continued her walk along the cross street to 17th and Madison. At the end of the block, the source of the errant police tape became obvious.
A four-story abandoned brick building at the corner of the street was caving in, crumbling. The windows were mostly broken if not completely gone.
The sidewalk in front of it was blocked off with police barricades, and the tape she’d found had certainly escaped from this site.
There was no police presence here now. No flurry of activity. But there had been, recently.
If Kendra was a beat reporter still, she’d likely know what the recent hubbub had been. But as it stood, she couldn’t recall. Some crime had occurred here, lately. Probably crimes happened here a lot. The building was a long-abandoned eyesore. It likely helped keep this neighborhood down, with its oppressive emptiness. Although safety could also be the reason for the barricades; a crumbling brick could fall on an unsuspecting pedestrian.
