The Girl From Diana Park

by Alec Peche

  “What did you do Damian?”

  “I added micro-crystals that perform a GPS tracking mechanism.”

  “So do the police have him in custody?”

  “No, my product needs more work. John O'Ryan took a shower at the marina he rented the boat at and another shower once he got back to his hotel. He changed clothes and then headed for Muir Woods and then we lost his signal.

  “I did a walk-around Ariana's property evaluating her security system, then I pulled out footage of her house and found that Ariana hadn't been turning her security system on and he'd visited a week ago and walked through her house. I think she felt the need to discard underwear that she'd seen John O'Ryan touch on the video. I'm staying at her house until he's captured. Last night at about two in the morning, Ariana heard a drone outside her bedroom, so I fired on it with a high powered water gun filled with honey. That gummed up the rotor blades and the thing dropped into the bay.”

  “It's never a dull day in your life,” Natalie said, then felt a ping of pain thinking back to the day when his family had been murdered.

  “It's certainly been unusual these past twelve months,” Damian said and Natalie let out a silent breath she'd been holding over her last comment glad he hadn't taken offense or gone back to that horrific day.

  “Well good luck with that.”

  “Actually, the two cases got me thinking about how to improve my invention with the micro-crystals. Lily is going to take the lead to figure out a technology that will stay for about five years so that children like Olivia can be tracked by law enforcement. We all wanted an expiration date on the product so that parents could choose at a certain age to let the technology expire as the kid becomes an adult. We would have the product applied only by law enforcement so that it can't be abused by adults. Then we'll need a machine that can track thousands of kids and decipher who the kid is that's missing.”

  “Wow, Damian that's brilliant! I like that you thought of the downside of the product and figured out a way to avoid that.”

  “We likely won't make money on the product, and it's a little Orwellian, but then I looked at the numbers of children that go missing daily, and it could be a real tool to keep children with their parents. First we have to figure out the technology.”

  “There's another advantage to you helping me with cold cases – you're coming up with new inventions.”

  “Speaking of cold cases and George Orwell's dystopia, I contacted a friend at Fantasia to see if they would let me run my facial recognition software through their footage to see if Olivia could be spotted at Fantasialand and this is him calling back.”

  Damian answered the cell and Natalie listened to his side of the conversation while she drove to the park where Olivia Roth was abducted. She could tell that Damian had been granted permission to visit the following week when he began arranging a meeting time.

  After he ended the call, he said, “Sorry Natalie, I had to arrange that on my schedule. Can you make the trip with me to meet with their lawyers and IT people on Tuesday? I'll make flight arrangements, and I think we need a half a day, so we would leave at noon and return at five to the Oakland airport. You could have dinner with Haley and Trevor to avoid trying to head home at rush hour.”

  “Damian, you're such a nice guy that I forget what a mover and shaker you are. I'll meet you at your office that morning, and we can go together. I'll bring my retired detective shield and parts of the casebook with me in hopes of exerting emotional blackmail on Fantasia.”

  “I didn't know you were into emotional blackmail Natalie,” Damian said with a grin.

  “Whatever works, but is still legal,” Natalie said parking the car.

  Damian could see the sign for Diana Park.

  They got out of the car and crossed to the park. Families were using the children's play area with kids on the swings, slides, and jungle gyms. As it was a school day, the kids all seemed pre-kindergarten in age. Moms and dads were playing with their offspring, and Damian saw the behavior of Olivia's mom by several of the parents. They would watch their child and smile or complement them and then look down at the phone. Parents were giving them a suspicious look as they didn't like strangers watching their children.

  “Let's walk around the park and you can recreate the kidnapping scenario for me. I sense we're making these parents uncomfortable. I want to see all the exits to the park, then we can return to the car and talk.”

  Natalie had her notes with her and said, “Jessica Roth was sitting on that bench," pointing to a bench inhabited by a mother rocking her infant in a stroller back and forth and watching another child.

  "Olivia Roth started on the swing set and moved to that jungle gym to go down the slide. Jessica watched her daughter slide down several times when her cell phone pinged and she looked down at a message she'd been waiting for. Jessica opened that email and before opening the attachment, she looked up planning on smiling at her daughter's enthusiasm for the jungle gym. When Jessica looked up, she couldn't see Olivia and so she stood up and walked over to the jungle gym just to make visual contact with her daughter. She did a complete circle walking around the jungle gym and calling her name a few times, then dialed 9-1-1. Officers arrived in two minutes and found her frantically running around the park calling for her daughter. Within minutes five officers were searching for Olivia. Soon, the FBI arrived to assist.”

  “Remind me what evidence they collected from this park,” Damian requested.

  “Olivia dropped her sweater during one of her rounds of the jungle gym swing set. Her mom said she would slide down and then race around to the stairs to climb up it again,” Natalie said pointing to the playset that Olivia used. “We got her DNA from the sweater as well as other items in the home. Dog sniffers were brought in, but they lost her scent one block over. The theory is that the kidnapper took Olivia out the back entrance of the park over there, and she had a car parked one block over. We'll go there once we're done here.”

  “Was Olivia's house that direction as well?” Damian asked pointing to the back exit.

  “No, it's down that street,” Natalie said pointing to a street that dead-ended into the park.

  “There are no city cameras in this immediate area?”

  “No.”

  “Did the FBI or the detectives ask area residents if they had security cameras?”

  “I'm sure they did as that's standard operating principle. I seem to recall they found nothing in that area, but I'll re-check. Cameras were less popular five years ago than they are today.”

  “True,” Damian said as he stood looking around the park. He could remember when he took his own girls to a park like this. They'd had a gym set in their backyard, but for variety they liked to come to the park. He looked around at the fencing and then came back to a spot, studied it and made a mental note to look it up later.

  After further discussion, Damian felt like he'd seen all that was relevant to the case and he'd come up with some new ideas to chase in the case. They headed for Natalie's car with silence between them as Damian mulled over what he'd seen at the park and what he read in the file.

  As they settled into the car, Damian took a look at his cell phone which had vibrated while they were leaving the park. He hit his cellphone screen a couple of times and watched something as Natalie started the engine of her car. It was an alarm from Ariana's security system.

  “Drive as fast as you can! Ariana's in trouble! I've got to call the Belvedere police.”

  “Do you want me to drive to her house?”

  Damian did some swift calculation thinking about the freeways and his boat.

  “Take me to the marina, I'll get there faster by boat.”

  Chapter 10

  Damian's heart stopped when he'd opened the screen and viewed different camera angles inside the house. He saw Ariana's stalker holding Hermione with a knife and Ariana unable to reach a phone to call for help while they were standing in her kitchen.

  Natalie listened a
s Damian dialed the Belvedere police and identified himself.

  “This is Damian Green and I want to report a home invasion and hostage situation at 375 Skyview Road in Belvedere. The suspect is John O'Ryan and he's holding a fifteen old girl at knifepoint. Officer Woodrow is aware of O'Ryan. I can see the situation from interior cameras and have forwarded Officer Woodrow a snapshot of the interior.”

  “Officers are being dispatched now to 375 Skyview Road. Are you at the residence Mr. Green?”

  “No, I was down in San Jose and was alerted by the security system alarm. I'm about twenty-five minutes away by boat. I'll be arriving at Ms. Knowles dock at that time. Please ask the officers to call me when they arrive on the scene so I can link them to the cameras of the security system.”

  “The first officer has arrived at the driveway. Several more are on their way with ETAs of one to ten minutes. The Marin County Sheriff is sending its Hostage Negotiation Team to the address.”

  “Can you give me the officer's email who is on the scene so I can link him into the security footage?”

  That information was provided and the Operator said, “Officer Remington indicated that he has the connection to the video link and can see the hostage situation. A second unit is arriving at the scene and as soon as Officer Remington gives the report to the second officer, I will connect you directly to his cell phone.”

  “Thank you,” Damian said. Natalie had written a note to Damian while he was talking asking if he wanted her to accompany him to Belvedere and after thinking about it for a few moments, he wrote back, “no”. They would have enough law enforcement resources at the scene and as a retired detective out of her jurisdiction, she'd have little power to impact the situation.

  He was roaring off across the bay minutes later glad that he'd used his speediest boat that day. The difference between his two boats equated to ten minutes which was a lot of time for this situation. Additional police resources had arrived at Ariana's house, but John O'Ryan was still holding a knife to Hermione's throat as Damian could see in the interior cameras. He briefly wondered where Miguel was. He was determined to reach Ariana's home before he lost a second family to a convicted criminal. Damian reviewed Ariana's house and thought of a plan. He checked compartments in his boat to assure himself of the available tools. Meanwhile, he had a headset on listening to the police outside Ariana's home. He'd been warned that he was not welcome at her house. Hostage negotiators had found in previous situations that having a family member participate in those negotiations rarely went well for the hostage. He had no plan to talk through a PA system or telephone to John O'Ryan or to show his face to police. Instead he planned to park his boat at a neighbor's dock and scale the side wall at Ariana's house. From there he hoped to work some of his inventions to save Hermione's life.

  Ariana's kitchen included a separate butler's pantry off to its side. What John O'Ryan didn't know was that very pantry had a trap door in the floor that led down to a root cellar used in Victorian times to keep vegetables, fruits and meats cool. Damian took certain cameras offline of Ariana's security system so that neither the police nor Mr. O'Ryan would see him enter the root cellar from an outside door. Damian was most grateful for Mr. O'Ryan picking this particular room for the hostage situation as it was the only room in her house that gave him secret access.

  He had a high powered water gun loaded with his most extreme pepper juice in his boat compartment. He was worried that Hermione was going to get the pepper juice splashed into her eyes and he carried two quart bottles of eyewash on his boat in case he ever got the juice in his own eyes. He would be prepared to immediately render first aid to Hermione, but he would rather treat her for eye trouble than a slit throat. John O'Ryan's back was to the butler's pantry. So he planned to sneak up behind him and simply tap him on the shoulder in hopes that he would look back in surprise with his eyes wide open at whoever tapped his shoulder. Ariana was facing the doorway to the butler's pantry and so would see his approach. He could only hope that she would hold her composure and not acknowledge his presence.

  He was approaching the Belvedere Peninsula and could see police lights on the road above her house. He was glad he had reviewed her security system recently to understand the weaknesses of it. Specifically, he knew to climb over the north wall rather than the south wall of her property. The north wall was on the same side of the house as a cellar door entry to the butler's pantry. He'd never met her neighbors on the north side, but with all the police activity he doubted they would do anything immediately about a strange boat parked at the dock. Just in case, he wrote a note that he would leave on the boat's windshield.

  He tied the boat up and could hear the PA speaker of the police at Ariana's. He took another look at the kitchen, to assure himself that he had the time to enter the house through the root cellar. Nothing had changed, and he was good to go with his plan. A minute later, he was over the north wall, duffle bag in hand, approaching the root cellar. He was grateful that the door to the cellar was partially covered by an oleander tree. It gave him cover from the police.

  He knelt down next to the cellar door and went to work on the padlock. The door was both bolt-locked on the outside and had a latch on the inside. He needed to get through both series of steel to get in the house. Fortunately in his emergency set of tools that he kept on board the boat was a jar of nitric acid. In the past, he'd outfitted his boat and car with emergency kits, and this was the first time he'd used the nitric acid, and he hoped that the acid would work quickly to break down the steel. He also had other tools that he could use to make cuts into the steel to accelerate the effect. He rechecked the screen and Mr. O'Ryan seemed to be in the same position conversing with Ariana and Hermione was still unharmed.

  With a little wiggling, he soon had the bolt broken open. He then went to work on the iron latch below underneath. Thankfully, it was an old house with none of the modern metals that would be hard to break. He dripped more nitric acid on the bolt and applied pressure to open the door. The old latch was slow to break and he debated adding heat to the acid when the latch broke open. He thanked his lucky stars that this cellar door was at some distance from the trap door that led inside Ariana's pantry. He was sure he wasn't making sounds loud enough to be heard through two doorways. He picked up his duffle bag and proceeded down the steps and into the cellar. Once on the cold cellar floor, he took off his shoes to ensure there would be no sound from his footsteps. He'd tried out the water pistol before he reached the dock and was assured it was in working order.

  He crept to the stairway leading to the trap door to the pantry, careful to place his weight at the sides of the steps, testing each one to make sure he made no noise. Just before raising the door, he rechecked everyone's positions on the security camera. John O'Ryan had released Hermione and backed them into a corner of her kitchen, while holding up a knife to prevent either one of them from passing by him. As far as Damian was concerned, it was a better position as he was less likely to get the potent pepper juice in Hermione's eyes now, but the two women had to be excellent actors so as not to give him away.

  He oiled the hinges, put gloves on his hands and then slightly opened the stairway door to look into Ariana's kitchen. She happened to look right at him and he placed a finger to his lips. She pulled Hermione into an embrace and whispered into her hair, “Don't look at the pantry.”

  Damian quickly and soundless eased into the pantry letting the door drop slowly and silently into place. He then stood up water gun in his right hand and ducked behind the door watching John O'Ryan through the hinges. He was telling Ariana that he would save her from the police outside and she kept him talking by asking him why he held a knife out to the two of them? John replied that Hermione was unnecessary and he wanted the two of them to go away. Damian had heard enough.

  He moved from behind the door, a completely cool customer facing down a man with a large knife. As planned, he tapped John O'Ryan on the shoulder and fired his water gun at his face. He not
ed that Ariana dragged Hermione down to the floor and they turned their faces away. They listened to the agonized screams of John O'Ryan on the floor while Damian headed to the front door to bring in law enforcement. Damian knew that all of this activity would be relayed to the police outside as they had the same camera in the kitchen that he did.

  As soon as he opened the door, he was nearly flattened by SWAT officers heading for Ariana's kitchen. Damian had the common sense to have left his pepper spray gun on the kitchen counter, but he told the officers passing him, “Be careful touching Mr. O'Ryan as he covered in a very potent pepper spray.”

  Once the SWAT officer determined that John O'Ryan was completely subdued they called in the paramedics to treat Mr. O'Ryan.

  “Give me a second, and I'll get you goggles to protect your eyes,” Damian said as he went back to the pantry cellar door and went down the stairs to grab his duffle. Several SWAT team members were watching him suspiciously worried that he would spray them with the burning substance.

  “Step away from the duffle sir,” came a command from one of the officers.

  Damian recognized that the tone of voice was deadly serious and so he backed away and said, “If one of you will look inside the duffle bag, you'll find several pairs of goggles to protect your eyes from the substance on Mr. O'Ryan's clothing and skin. There are also two quarts of eyewash in there to treat his eyes.”

  He hugged Hermione and Ariana now that the situation was under control. “Might the three of us go sit outside near the pool while you finish in here?”

  Officer Woodrow of the Belvedere Police stepped forward and said, “I'll go outside with the three of you and begin collecting your statements.” The officer looked at the SWAT team leader for affirmation and he nodded. No one wanted a teenage girl in the vicinity of a stalker screaming obscenities who had recently held a knife to her neck.

  “Where's Miguel?” Damian asked.