by Matt Lincoln
“What’cha looking at?” Holm asked me, diverting his attention from where he had been peering out the window at the bright blue early summer sky beneath us.
“News reports about this whole thing,” I said, shaking my head as I scrolled through an article about the parents going on the news, pleading for anyone with any information to come forward and bring their son back to them.
I scanned the photographs for any sign of an FBI agent. I only saw one person who might fit the bill: a woman in a skirt, blouse, and suit jacket who always seemed to be standing right next to the parents. The police detectives always had guns at their sides to identify them, and they stood a little further away, but this woman could be hiding her weapon somewhere and disguising herself in plain clothes.
It was possible, however, that the FBI agent involved wasn’t anywhere near the parents but was out there somewhere hunting down the perps. It was a tough call. The parents were an important part of dealing with a situation like this, and panicked parents could also make matters worse inadvertently by offering an enormous reward or revealing details about the investigation on television. There was a fine line between working the case and preventing further damage from within.
“What do they say?” Holm asked, leaning forward and trying to peer over at my tablet’s screen. “What are we dealing with here?”
“It is a weird case,” I said, shaking my head again as I clicked on an article about the perps. Or rather, perp. It seemed that only a description of one was released to the media.
“How so?” Holm asked, craning his neck to try to see, so I shifted the tablet to give him a better view.
“See this here?” I asked, pointing at the blurry, cropped security footage picture of a man with acne scars on his cheek, dark hair, and a hazel-colored jacket. “This is the picture of the perp that’s been circulating in the media. The guy looks like a lone wolf, right?”
“Sure does,” Holm agreed, scowling at the picture. “I’d like to clock him a new one. I’ll tell you that.”
The guy did look like a creep, even without the information we had about him, I decided. But that was beside the point.
“Me, too, but that’s not what I mean,” I said quickly. “This is the only picture that keeps appearing in any of the articles. There’s only the mention of this one guy, but nothing about the other perp. Diane said there were two, right?”
“Yeah, she did,” Holm confirmed with a nod, his brow now furrowed in confusion as he followed my reasoning. “She said that he was all geared up in a ski mask and stuff, right?”
“That’s right,” I said, nodding. “But there’s no mention of that in any of the official reports from the police or the FBI. Nothing. Some witnesses who were interviewed by the media said something about a man with a gun, but people seem to be chalking that up to eyewitness testimony being shaky at best.”
“Now they come around,” Holm huffed. “Usually, they’ll run with anything on a story like this.”
“I know, that’s what’s so weird,” I said. “The police and the FBI must be keeping the second perp quiet for some reason. It would make sense, in a way, if they think this is more organized than a lone-wolf operation. People are already panicking. It’d be so much worse if they thought there was some kind of child sex trafficking operation going on.”
“God, do you think there is?” Holm asked, his eyes widening.
I knew my partner was smart enough to know that this was a possibility, but it wasn’t exactly fun to think about. My stomach churned just at the thought, and I began to regret eating all that rich food at the diner earlier.
“That’s what we’re going to need to find out,” I said quietly. “Another reason they probably didn’t release any of this to the media is to avoid tipping any organization off that we may know about them. We have the upper hand in that way, for now, though until we find that kid, we’re going to be racing against the clock. That’s the most important thing here.”
“Usually, these aren’t stranger situations,” Holm said, biting his lip and shaking his head. “Usually, it’s someone known to the kid who took him. But in those news conference photos, it looks like they’re operating under the assumption that the parents had nothing to do with it, and they don’t know anyone who could’ve done this.”
“Both things could be true,” I mused, leaning back in my chair and running a hand across my face as I pondered this. “It’s not unheard of for law enforcement to treat it as a kind of Schrodinger’s cat situation, and getting the parents in front of the cameras can reveal a lot about their own psychology. Even so, the parents were with him when it happened, and all reports say they were distraught. I doubt they’re involved, but given the statistics, you’re right that we should keep an open mind about it.”
“Could be only one parent knew about it, so the other had a genuine reaction,” Holm suggested. “I heard about a case like that overseas a few years back.”
“Yeah, that was a nasty one,” I said, wincing again at the memory. “The mother had her own kid killed, and the father didn’t know a thing about it. It took so long for the authorities to crack the case because he just kept going on publicity tours, quit his job even, trying to find his kid, and they never considered the possibility that one of the parents could’ve done it because his reaction was so genuine. But it was her all along.”
“An open mind, then,” Holm said with a curt nod, leaning back in his own seat and looking more than a little green. “We just need to figure out what happened to this kid.”
“I know,” I said, gazing out the window some more. “We’re going straight to the police station when we arrive. We’ll see if we can meet with the parents and talk with the FBI agent and detectives on the case. We’ll have a better idea of where we stand then. In the meantime, the Coast Guard’s out looking for the kid, and so are the police and state troopers on land.”
“I kind of want to join the search myself,” Holm said, his tone troubled. “Directly, I mean.”
“We will,” I assured him. “But we have to get our bearings first. The last thing we want is to waste time looking in all the wrong places when a little investigating would’ve pointed us in the right direction.”
8
Ethan
Holm and I were met at the gate by a young officer who looked like an all-American kid, if a bit bedraggled, with his golden blond hair tousled beneath his cap and a worried, anxious look in his eyes.
“Agents Marston and Holm?” he asked us as he rushed over, taking our bags despite our protestations.
“The one and only,” Holm grinned. “Or two, I guess. And you are?”
He held out his hand to the young man, who shook it and then mine, shifting my light suitcase to his other hand briefly.
“Officer Ryan Hollister, sir,” he said. “Man, are we glad to have you here.”
“That bad, huh?” I asked, worry percolating in the pit of my stomach as we followed the young man out into a private parking lot near our gate, where his police car was waiting for us by the door with its hazard lights on.
“We’ve never seen anything like this here, sir,” he said, shaking his head. His eyes were about the size of a couple of golf balls. “And the media’s everywhere, and the parents are freaking out, of course. You could say we’re a bit out of our comfort zone on this one.”
He placed our luggage on an empty seat and opened the passenger and backseat doors for us, and I climbed in the front while Holm settled in the back next to our luggage.
“There’s no harm in admitting that,” I assured him as he got behind the steering wheel. “Most departments three times your size would be out of their depth, but that’s why we’re here.”
“The FBI been any help?” Holm asked.
“Oh yeah, they sent two people,” Officer Hollister said brightly as he pulled us out of the parking lot and onto a nearby interstate, headed in the direction of his small town not far from there. “I’ve only really talked to the psy
chologist, though. The other agent, the one who was at the mall, she hasn’t been in the station much. Lots of tracking down the bad guys, I guess.”
I noticed that the young officer looked a little envious at this. Maybe he had aspirations for becoming a detective.
“Ah, yeah, she ran into the guy in the mall, right?” Holm asked, leaning forward as Hollister pulled into the left lane.
“Yeah, that was rough,” the kid sighed, shaking his head and peering back at Holm in the rearview mirror. “She nearly caught him, but some idiot in the crowd got in the way, I guess, ran right into her, and knocked her over. When the perp shot at her, everyone freaked out.”
“Why was there such a big crowd?” I asked. “They didn’t shut the mall down after the kid was taken?”
“Tried, but there weren’t enough of them and too many people who wanted in,” Hollister sighed. “It was mostly mall security at that point and a couple of officers. Everyone else was out looking for the kid or back at the station with the parents.”
“Makes sense, I guess,” Holm grumbled. “The security part, I mean, not the crowd. I don’t get why anyone would want to be near a crime scene like that.”
“It’s like watching a car crash,” I sighed, shaking my head. “All morbid curiosity and no common sense. Probably would’ve caught the guy if it weren’t for the crowd, though he may not have been there in the first place if it weren’t for them giving him a chance to blend in, so I guess it’s all a wash at the end of the day.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” Holm said, and I got the sense that he had another way. I didn’t exactly disagree.
“How are the parents?” I asked Hollister. “Is the FBI psychologist getting through to them?”
Sometimes parents were the opposite of helpful in these situations, even if they didn’t have anything to do with the kidnapping itself. They were distraught, or enraged, or trying to run the investigation themselves, questioning everything the police and assembled experts said or did. Any reaction was understandable in my mind, given the situation, but the FBI was right to send an expert to deal with them. That was probably the woman I had seen in the picture, I realized, always hovering near the mother and father of the missing boy.
“They’re understandably upset,” Hollister said, pursing his lips. “I can’t even imagine… if something like that happened to my daughter, I’d be screaming bloody murder.”
I glanced over at him in surprise.
“Think I’m too young to have a kid?” he chuckled, arching an eyebrow at me. “Don’t worry. You’re not the only one. At least I’ll still be young when she goes off to college. Any kids of your own?”
“No,” I said. “A little busy with my career, I’m afraid.”
“Same here,” Holm added.
“That’s alright,” Hollister said brightly. “At least you probably get to sleep through the night more often than not.”
We drove on in silence for some time until we arrived at our little coastal destination. I could see the water off in the distance, and I lowered my window to take in the familiar salty air. There was nothing like that smell.
Hollister took his car through the streets of the tiny town, and we passed several shops in a small downtown area and some quaint residential areas with cozy little houses to match the aesthetic of the town itself.
It was very quiet, quieter than I expected even, especially for the afternoon on a hazy early summer day.
“Most of the people pack up and leave?” Holm asked, no doubt thinking the same as me.
“Seems like it,” Hollister remarked. “If they didn’t leave when the first news hit, they did after the shooting at the mall. That seemed to scare everyone into some common sense, at least.”
I did see a number of police cars as we rolled through the town, though, no doubt belonging to officers searching for the missing boy. Even though the Coast Guard believed they spotted him and one of his abductors at sea, it was always possible that it was a mistake, or that the boy was already back on land for some reason. There was no reason to abandon the search on land until we knew for certain where he could be.
Finally, we pulled into a police station, likely the only one in town.
“Here we are,” Hollister said, parking near the front door. “Back to the old grindstone. I’m sure my boss will want to have a word with you before you question the parents or any other witnesses. The FBI agent might be back by now, too.”
“Of course,” I said, nodding to him. “Thank you for picking us up. Hopefully, we’ll run into you again soon.”
“You can count on it,” the young man grinned as he followed us out of the car and opened the door for us. “The chief’s office is right back there. He should be waiting for you. I let him know when you arrived.”
Hollister pointed us in the right direction, and we thanked him again and headed on our way.
Eyes followed us as we made our way through the main desk area. There were a number of officers and detectives there, some of them surely in from neighboring towns, clustered around a whiteboard detailing the case.
I didn’t notice the woman from the pictures who I assumed to be the FBI psychologist anywhere, nor the parents, or anyone who might be the FBI agent. They all had badges that looked more like policemen’s than that of a federal agent’s.
We didn’t stop to talk, and no one talked to us, though I felt a pervasive nervous energy in the room, perhaps accentuated by the cups of coffee and energy drinks that were strewn all over the place. No one was probably going to sleep until this kid was found. Not for long, at least.
The door to the chief’s office was ajar, but I knocked anyway.
“Come in,” a gruff voice called, and Holm and I walked through, closing the door behind us.
Inside, we found a weary-looking man who I would place in his early sixties sitting behind a massive desk piled high with files, not unlike Diane’s at that very moment. The man appeared to have been picking one of his eyebrows, and the remaining hairs were sticking up in the opposite direction they should’ve. He was slumped over and looked like he was in need of a good night’s sleep and maybe a Xanax, even though it was still afternoon.
“I’m Agent Ethan Marston, and this is my partner, Robbie Holm, from MBLIS,” I said, nodding to the man behind the desk. “We’re here to help out with the missing child case.”
“Of course you are,” he sighed, waving a hand to indicate that we should sit in the two wooden seats across from him. “I’m Chief Raskin. Welcome, we’re glad to have you.”
He sounded just as exhausted as he looked.
“We’re glad to be here,” I said, taking my seat, closely followed by Holm. “Why don’t you update us on what you have so far?”
“I’m afraid not much since the FBI called you in,” he said, and I noticed the hint of a southern twang in his raspy voice. “We’ve been looking and looking, but he’s not anywhere in this town, or if he is, he’s hiding real good.”
“We were told there were two perps seen in the initial video, but only one showed back up at the mall later, and only one is mentioned in media reports,” Holm said, and Raskin nodded.
“Yeah, the FBI took the lead on that one,” he said. “Thought it would be best not to tip ‘em off that we know about the other perp since he was all bundled up and only a couple of witnesses got a decent look at him. We’ve kept those witnesses quiet for now, but it’s only a matter of time until the reporters get to ‘em, I’d say.”
I thought that Raskin looked a bit more world-weary than I would’ve expected for a department of this size.
“You always worked here?” I asked him.
“Oh, no, sir,” he said, shaking his head. “Not at all. I used to be a detective up in Durham. I got one or two cases like this in my tenure, though never this high profile. Thought this job would be less stressful, but… well, the world has a way of laughing at you, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does,” I agreed with a chuckle. �
��Only the one perp was at the mall, then? We know that for sure?”
“We’ve scoured all the tapes for any sign of the other guy,” Raskin said with a shrug. “Can’t say they’re great tapes, but I feel like we would’ve noticed him in that getup. Though he could’ve been dressed normally, then, and we never would’ve known the difference since we never got a look at his face.”
I nodded, considering this. It was possible that both had been there the second time, then.
“No sign of the boy, though?” Holm asked.
“Oh, no,” Raskin said, shaking his head for emphasis. “No way. That I’m sure of. If that kid was there, someone would’ve noticed him. His face is everywhere, and the crowd at the mall knew it. It’s why they were there in the first place.”
“Only one guy was seen on the boat, though?” I asked. “Do we know which one?”
“The Coast Guard guy picked the man with the face out of a photo lineup,” Raskin said, indicating a spot on his cheek that told me he was talking about the man with the acne scars. “So we’re guessing it’s him. We didn’t get a good description of the boat itself, though. It could’ve been the other guy was hiding in a cabin somewhere.”
“He had to have gone out there between the scuffle at the mall and when the Coast Guard saw him, then,” Holm mused, and I nodded.
“Alright, then, if there isn’t anything else, I think it’s high time we spoke with the parents,” I said.
9
Ethan
I’d been dreading this part since we’d caught the case. I didn’t want to have to look these parents in the eye and deal with their grief and pain, let alone question them about whether they could’ve had anything to do with their son’s disappearance.
We’d have to do that subtly. For obvious reasons, parents didn’t tend to respond well to that kind of questioning.
Raskin led Holm and me down a small hallway lined with interrogation rooms until we got to a waiting area at the back with a couch, a couple of comfy chairs, and a vending machine. A man and a woman I recognized as the boy’s parents from the news sat on the couch. The father was crying, and the woman had her arm around him. Another woman, who I also recognized from the news, leaned close to them in one of the chairs, her hands folded and resting gently on the edge of a coffee table between them. She was murmuring something to them.
