Purgatory Creek

by C. E. Nelson

  Little looked at the paper. It was a request for information by the police department from anyone who may have seen a pink plastic dinosaur. There was an image of the toy and a description. “Yeah, it does kind of.” Little was thinking that what her son had was the item pictured, and now her mind had drifted back to the night she had seen it in his arms.

  “Whatever. I got to get going. See you tomorrow.” The girl turned and walked towards the front door, Little saying ‘goodbye’ without looking up from the flyer.

  She finished with the groceries, changed out of her work clothes, and started to make dinner. Her husband said he would be home for the meal but what he said and what he did were often different things. Little poured a glass of wine, sipping as she cooked, pausing at times to stare at the police flyer she left lying on the counter. She was studying it, thinking she should go downstairs and get a better look at what her son had found, when the door to the garage opened.

  Mark Little walked into the kitchen, dropping his briefcase on the chair by the door, going directly to the refrigerator for a beer with no kind of greeting for his wife. He popped open the beer. Cheryl was leaning on the counter with her elbows, looking at the flyer about the dinosaur, Mark pulling it toward him. “What’s this?”

  “The police dropped it off today. Mark, that’s the toy that Michael has.”

  Mark took a moment to read the flyer and then looked at the image. “Maybe. But that thing he has is a completely different color.”

  “It’s just faded. The description even says it might be faded.”

  He looked at her and took a long drink. “We should get rid of it. He already has plenty of toys and that thing is probably loaded with germs. We don’t need him getting sick.”

  “I cleaned it and disinfected it, but that’s not the point. We should call the police about this.”

  “Are you nuts? The last thing we have time for is to get involved in some police investigation.”

  “But Lisa said she thought it looked like the picture too.”

  “Christ! Lisa saw this?” He held up the flyer and looked at it momentarily before crumpling it and tossing it in the trash. “Get rid of that thing tonight and do not bring it up with that girl again. Do you understand?”

  Cheryl knew what he said was wrong, but she was too tired to get into another useless argument. “Fine.”

  Mark looked at her as he finished his beer, crushing the can and putting it on the counter. “I got to go out. I’ll be late.”

  She watched him go and then looked down at the picture of the pink dinosaur again.

  Chapter 8

  “The second snag is here.” Seton stood at Trask’s shoulder, pointing out the location of the fallen tree and the mess that had accumulated upstream.

  Trask’s map of the creek along with Seton’s photos were spread across his desk. “So, that’s about half-a-mile north of where we found the body?”

  “Yeah, I’d say about that. All homes and townhomes along the creek from the park to Eden Prairie Road except where Scenic Heights Drive runs alongside of it north of 62nd. It’s just the road there.” Seton stood there for a moment longer before he walked around Trask’s desk and sat, his legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. “I think we may as well start looking at the bridge and work north. There are those two wash-outs between the last snag and the bridge, both of them came right up to the trees, one on the west and one on the east side.”

  Trask looked up from his map. “Yeah. This won’t be fun, but you’re going to need to get some mud waders, you and whoever you pick to go with you. Shouldn’t be too bad walking to the washouts from the homeowners’ backyards, but those snags could be bad.”

  “What is this going to net us, Don? I mean – "

  “Yeah, I know, but I owe it to her parents. If there is any chance of finding anything that will link someone to the killing, we got to look. Sorry.”

  “Beats flying, I guess.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that too.” Trask smiled, not looking like he was that sorry. “So, what else do you know?”

  Seton picked up his notebook from the edge of Trask’s desk and flipped it open. “One hundred and eighty-seven people in Minnesota disappeared in the last ten years, nearly one hundred of those in the last five years. A good number of them have been teenagers – likely runaways, sex trafficking, that sort of thing.”

  “Teenagers are so smart and so dumb.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “How’s Jake doing?”

  Jake was fourteen, Seton’s oldest. He had decided that spending time with his girlfriend was more important than spending time on his homework, and his grades had suffered. Informing his parents he was thinking about dropping out of school, he cited all the famous people he had looked up on the internet who had never made it past eighth grade. “I guess you can feel pretty ostracized when you’re the only fourteen-year-old in the world who doesn’t have a phone. He’s doing better. Marge and I are still really dumb, but he’s agreed to put up with our rules for the time being.”

  “Man, I remember those days. Was going to steal my parents’ car but my goody-two-shoes brother told on me. Probably saved my life. I was only thirteen and had no idea how to drive. Sure pissed me off though.”

  “Yeah, so anyway, not so many young kids have disappeared and stay missing. Only six in the last five years.”

  “Hmm. OK, well it was worth – "

  “But there is a weird thing. Four of those missing kids have been in the western suburbs, three since Libby Carlson.”

  “Any around the creek?”

  “One, a year ago. The others weren’t that far away.” Seton passed Trask the three folders that he had brought with him. “No witnesses, no ties between the kids and their families. No suspects.”

  “No mention of Arnold Daniel?”

  “Nope.”

  Trask flipped open the first folder. Seven-year-old Eric Simpson, red hair and freckles with a pug nose, stared at him from a photo clipped inside the cover. He closed that folder and moved on to the next. Daniel Peterson. Also seven. Blonde, a little chubby. William Abrams. Eight. Dark hair, dark eyes, thin face. “I remember a couple of these.” Trask remembered them all but had intentionally stayed a distance from the abduction investigations. He was afraid he’d be biased, go after Daniel like he did before.

  “Yeah. We assisted Hennepin and Dakota counties. Simpson was last seen not far from the creek; the other two were several miles away in different directions.”

  “Could be just a coincidence.”

  Seton looked at Trask. “Could be, but you don’t think so, do you?”

  Trask dodged the question. “Can you leave these files with me?”

  “Sure, boss. I’ll grab a couple of guys and head back out there tomorrow.” Seton pulled his legs in, stood, and began to leave.

  “Anything from the flyers?”

  “Nope.”

  Trask watched Seton go; Stoxon immediately poking his head in the office.

  “It’s time.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Trask stood slowly, like an old man, struggling under a load. The results of the DNA test on Libby’s remains had positively identified her. Trask had called her parents in to meet with him in the conference room to let them know.

  Mark Carlson was standing, looking out the window, and not really seeing much of anything. The mindless numbness he had that had enveloped him after Libby disappeared, the feeling he had worked so hard to cover with work and his son, held him again. He turned at the sound of Trask opening the door to the conference room, walking past his seated wife to shake the BCA agent’s hand.

  Trask stared, only for a moment, but he knew that Carlson had noticed. The man had lost weight, now painfully thin, his face deeply lined, but it was the look in his eyes that grabbed Trask’s attention. The lost look. A look he remembered from five years before. “Why don’t you sit down, Mark?” He turned his attention to Janet Carlson, seated on the oppo
site side of the table. She too looked thinner, but the pain he had seen in her face had softened over the years. “Thanks for coming, Janet.” Janet nodded but remained silent as her husband sat next to her. Sitting opposite them, Trask placed a folder with the DNA results on the table and opened it, looking at the paper inside.

  He didn’t need to look, didn’t need the folder or results at all. He knew what was reported; he just did not want to talk about it, did not want to open wounds again. As far as he could tell all this would do would kill any hope that the parents may have been clinging to. Others had told him it was good to give them closure, but Trask didn’t buy it. Holding up the DNA report, looking at it but not reading anything there, Trask said, “The DNA results are positive. The body we found is Libby. I’m sorry.” Trask did not want to look at the pair but felt he had no choice.

  Janet’s hands were folded on the table, and Mark put his hand on top. She looked at him as a tear made its way down her cheek. Mark wiped the tear away with his free hand. She turned to Trask. “Thank you, Agent. I know that wasn’t easy.”

  “The coroner should release her remains tomorrow. They will call you.”

  “Any other information?” asked Mark.

  Trask knew what he was after. “Not at this time. I have assigned agents to search the creek, and we have distributed a flyer with a description of her dinosaur, asking for any leads. We’re working on it.”

  “You’ve never given up, have you?” said Janet.

  “It’s my job, Mrs. Carlson.”

  “Yes, but it’s more than that for you.” She gave him a look that showed a toughness he had not seen before. “Catch whoever did this to my baby, Agent Trask.”

  Trask walked them to the door, watching them cross the street to their car, get in, and drive away. Janet giving him a finger wave. Muttering an obscenity, Trask turned and walked up the stairs. He had to go back to where he said he would never go again. He had to find Arnold Daniel.

  Chapter 9

  The sweat stung as it dripped into his eyes. Seton pulled up the bottom of his shirt and wiped his forehead and eyes, not sure if it was really doing much good. His shirt was soaked, and his blonde hair plastered to his head. It was only nine-thirty the next morning, the temperature already above eighty, the sun a giant heat lamp in the cloudless sky. The smell was almost as bad, dead fish and drowned animals now pungent, Seton and his men turning and cringing as they encounter each source.

  Purgatory Creek had nearly returned to its usual level, its sources from the west dissipating after the storm. Grasses and plants and small wild shrubs on the surrounding open areas were washed brown and bent, waves of leaves and branches and other matter left as the water receded holding them to the muddy ground. The creek had sharp edges now where the ground had collapsed during the flood like glaciers dropping into the ocean.

  Seton stood in his waders in the middle of the creek, looking downstream at the snag. A dead oak had fallen in the storm, its top just reaching the edge of the creek, enough for the branches there to gather whatever had come its way, a rake grabbing and holding what tried to get past. Smaller and smaller pieces of debris were captured as the water rushed by building a wall until the water was forced to move around it. The creek was only a foot deep, but the blockade was easily eight feet high.

  He had put on leather gloves at the last minute and now was glad he did. The branches were broken and sharp, especially those that had been dead, and they poked at him, some through his palm. The gloves were soaked and stuck to him, not because of the creek water but because of the perspiration that ran down his arms. Seton and his men pulled at the tangle, moving branches that they couldn’t toss enough to shine a light behind. The waders were a walking sauna. They helped from sinking into the mud, but the bottom was not as soft as Seton had expected, and he wished now he had only worn rubber boots.

  Seton had worked with Trask for over fifteen years, the last four at the BCA, joining Don shortly after Trask had been appointed lead agent. Seton had seen Trask at his best and at his worst, when he was sure Don was going to wash out his whole career with whiskey, blaming himself for the unsolved murders of his parents. Trask had climbed out of that hole, but now Seton wondered if he wasn’t going down another. He believed Don had transferred his fanaticism about finding his parents’ killer to finding the killer of Libby Carlson. Seton had not worked for Trask at the time, but he had heard from Don during his search for the girl’s killer and heard stories about what Don had not told him. He knew Trask had been drinking heavily again at the time, but Trask had seemed to pull out of it much more quickly than he had done with his parents. There was a self-control that Seton hadn’t seen before that convinced Seton to work with Trask again when Don had asked.

  But now he wondered. The search seemed to be going too far. He understood the logic, narrowing the area where the body could have been buried, but even if they found what could have been the burial site, what would it tell them? After all this time it was highly unlikely there would be anything there to help them. If it was close to a particular house, it would make them look at the owners of the property at the time of the abduction much more carefully, but, from what Seton had seen from above, most of the creekside property was easily accessible from just about anywhere. But Seton was a follower, at least he told himself that. He liked to be given direction; it just made life easier. He could give orders, but he didn’t want the political hassles and the hard decision-making that Trask went through. But this whole thing was personal for Trask, and it seemed to Seton his time could be better spent on other investigations.

  “Pete!” The man to Seton’s left was pulling at a large branch, trying to stick his head inside the maze.

  “Yeah?”

  “Help here. I think I see something.”

  “What do mean, gone?”

  Larry Stoxon folded one leg over the other as he sat in his usual chair in front of his boss’s desk and looked at his pad. “Pretty much what that sounds like. Arnold Daniel lived on Creekside Drive until about four years ago, and then there is nothing. I checked with the employer you had on record, and they have no one there by that name. DMV have several people named Arnold Daniel but none that have the same birth date as the man you are looking for. He may have left the state or passed away.”

  “That scumbag isn’t dead. I’d have had a very happy feeling if he was.”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  Trask watched his assistant pick a piece of lint off the knee of his white linen slacks. Trask knew his clothes and guessed the slacks were easily three hundred dollars. He looked at Stoxon’s shirt and tie and figured they probably had an equal price tag. Trask had never asked, and never would, but he just couldn’t figure out how the guy could dress better than he did on Stoxon’s salary. Leaning forward, he tried to get a look over the edge of the desk at Stoxon’s shoes.

  “Are you all right, sir?”

  “No. I want to know where Daniel is.”

  “Hmm.” Stoxon looked down at his pad and then typed.

  Trask opened his mouth to say something when his assistant raised one finger without looking up. Trask had not figured out how Stoxon knew when he was about to speak, but he knew that when Stoxon cut him off like this, it was usually for a good reason. The guy had amazing ways of finding out things.

  “Well, this is interesting,” said Stoxon, still looking at his pad.

  “What?” Trask was growing impatient.

  “It seems Arnold Daniel is now Daniel Arnold.”

  “What?”

  “For some reason he changed his name, let’s see, a little over four years ago.”

  “Huh.” Trask leaned back in his chair. “Sounds like a man who doesn’t want to be found.”

  “Quite possibly, but why not change your name to something completely different then?”

  “Who knows? So, where is he?”

  Stoxon typed some more while Trask watched. “Creekside Drive. It looks like he moved about a blo
ck from his old house.”

  “Now why would he do that?” Trask could think of only two reasons. First, the guy wanted to escape the media. Trask had made no secret of his interest in Daniel at the time Libby disappeared, and the media had camped out in front of Daniel’s house and work, following him whenever he appeared. And then there was the other reason. There was something in Daniel’s house that he did not want Trask or the police to find, something he could leave behind. Trask turned to his window. “Give me the address. Find out where he works and when he gets off.” The sun was high in the early afternoon sky, occasional cotton ball clouds drifting by, but Trask was only seeing the face of a man he knew was a killer.

  Stoxon got up, started walking from the office as he looked at his pad, when he stopped, turning to Trask who still had his back to him. “Sir?”

  Trask spun around. “You already got it?”

  “Um, no sir.”

  “Then what?”

  “It seems there has been a call placed to Minnetonka police for a child missing, sir.” Stoxon looked up. “The call came from a home on Creekside Drive.”

  Chapter 10

  There was a white Minnetonka Police SUV on the curb and a tan sedan in the driveway of the red brick-faced rambler when Trask arrived. Two officers were sitting in the SUV watching as Trask exited his car, walking in front of them and to the front steps where two men in sport coats stood talking. The men on the steps turned as Trask approached.

  “Trask,” said the older of the two men, Jim Palm. Palm was past fifty, jowls and a gut, shaved head, under six feet by an inch. He was dressed in a tan sport coat with patches at the elbows, the notched lapel on his right bent out, and he pressed it down as he spoke. Trask and Palm’s paths had crossed a few times over the years, often accompanied by a tumbler of bourbon. The other man, Steve Grace, was fifteen years younger than Palm. His thick black hair was parted on the right in a neat line. He had bushy eyebrows and a thick mustache. Grace was short but muscular, an ocean-blue sport shirt under his khaki blazer. He did not know Trask, nodding and extending his hand. Both men were detectives for Minnetonka.