by Chris Carter
‘What shoe size was he?’
‘Eleven,’ Sanders replied and made a face. ‘Yeah, I know, the most common male shoe size in the US.’
‘How about the jacket fibers?’ Garcia asked.
‘Mr. Hade told the police that he did have one of those exact jackets, but it was old and torn, so he had thrown it away a few days prior to his interview.’
‘Convenient,’ Garcia commented.
‘Was he ever arrested?’ Hunter asked.
‘No. Despite suspicions, police didn’t have enough to justify an arrest.’ Sanders regarded both detectives for a quick second. ‘I know what you’re thinking – so this Mathew Hade was a person of interest in a missing persons investigation in Fresno, so what, right?’
Neither detective replied. Their silence spoke for itself.
‘Well, I don’t blame you, because I thought the same. But there’s more,’ Sanders added. ‘Just turn the page. And here is where it starts to get interesting.’
Fifty-Eight
Despite still being completely confused by what was happening, Squirm drew in a courageous breath and took a couple of wary steps in the direction of the breakfast table. The boy’s eyes were fixed on the man sitting at its head. Part of him was still expecting this whole thing to be a trick. He kept anticipating ‘The Monster’ jumping up from his seat and punching him hard enough to shatter bone, then laughing at how easy it had been to trick him.
But that never happened.
‘C’mon, Squirm,’ ‘The Monster’ said, once again tapping the tabletop twice with his right hand. ‘Have a seat. Eat your breakfast.’ He reached for the newspaper and pushed it across the table as well. ‘Have a look at the paper if you like. It makes no difference to me.’
As Squirm got closer, the man pulled out the chair next to him.
‘It’s not a trick, Squirm,’ the man said, reading the fear in the boy’s eyes. ‘I give you my word. I understand why you’re so hesitant. I would’ve reacted the same way, but this is for real. The food is yours if you want it.’
Squirm’s gaze finally moved from the man’s face to the breakfast plate and he immediately started salivating. His stomach growled like a sick dog.
‘I can actually hear how hungry you are,’ the man said, placing his plastic cutlery by the plate. ‘Here, today you also don’t have to eat using your hands. You can use these.’
At last, Squirm took a seat at the table. Still very concerned, the boy kept his gaze on the man and his hands in his lap.
‘It’s not going to magically jump from the plate into your mouth, Squirm. And I sure as hell am not going to put it there for you.’
Squirm’s hunger finally won the battle and the boy reached for the knife and fork. As he did, the heavy metal chain that shackled his wrists together rattled against the tabletop, almost tipping over the plastic cereal bowl and pushing the breakfast plate off the table.
‘Here,’ the man said, reaching inside his trouser pocket for a key. ‘Let me help you with that.’
He took the boy by the arm and unlocked one of the metal rings around his wrists.
Squirm looked down at his hands. The skin around his free wrist, where the thick metal ring had hugged it for so long, was red, raw and inflamed. Instinctively, he touched it with the fingertips of his opposite hand and as they grazed the ugly wound a burning, stinging pain shot up his arms, but boy, did it feel good?
OK. This must be a dream. This just can’t be happening.
The man looked down at the breakfast plate, and followed the look with a jerk of his head. ‘Eat.’
Squirm gripped the fork with his free right hand. His good eye scanned the contents of the plate, trying to decide what to go for first. He could barely remember the last time he’d had a civilized hot meal. His hand shot toward the plate and he scooped up as much scrambled eggs as the tiny fork could possibly hold. A millisecond later, the fork was in his mouth. The process was repeated once again, almost too fast for the eye to see. His scrawny cheeks puffed up like inflated balloons from the amount of food the boy had shoved inside his mouth. He could hardly chew it all.
‘Wow, hey,’ the man said, lifting a hand. ‘Easy, Squirm. You’re going to make yourself sick. The food isn’t going to go anywhere. I told you, you can have it all. I’m not going to take it away from you.’
Squirm still chewed as fast as he could. Once he finally swallowed the first mouthful, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. One more time, and still fearfully, he peeked at the man, who seemed totally unconcerned.
The boy reached for a piece of toast.
In silence, the man watched him eat. Squirm still ate fast, but not as fast as his first few mouthfuls. He drank his orange juice in gulps and finished the bowl of cereal in record time, but without spilling a single drop. He was about to eat the last of the food, a piece of bacon rasher, when the man spoke again.
‘You really don’t remember what day today is, do you?’
Squirm paused before the piece of bacon hit his lips.
‘Not at all?’ his captor asked.
Squirm frowned, but failed to reply.
‘OK, I’ll tell you.’ There was a forced, full-of-suspense pause. ‘Today is your birthday, Squirm.’
Shocked, the boy looked back at his captor. The piece of bacon fell from his fork back on to the plate.
Squirm’s life had taken such a drastic turn in the past few days that he had completely forgotten about his own birthday. The last time he had thought about it had been on the day he was abducted, as he was leaving school. Back then, there had been only nine days to go.
The boy’s eyes ran the length of his skinny arms all the way to his hands. Dry blood coated his knuckles and every single one of his nails. All of them broken. He had no idea what his face looked like, as there were no mirrors or shiny surfaces anywhere in the house, but Squirm wasn’t sure he wanted to know. What he did know was that he had also lost a silly amount of weight. He looked like someone who had been struggling with either anorexia or bulimia.
Oh my God! I’ve been here for only nine days?
In the boy’s mind, it really did feel like a year or more.
‘I guess that explains why I’m being nice to you today,’ the man said, sitting back in his seat. ‘So, happy birthday, Squirm. That breakfast was your present.’
The boy felt tears coming to his eyes, but he remembered his promise from earlier on and somehow found the strength to choke them.
‘You’re not going to read the paper?’
Squirm peered at it, but his hands didn’t move.
‘You must be curious about what is going on out there, aren’t you? You’ve been missing for quite a few days now. The police must be going crazy trying to find you, don’t you think?’
No reply. No movement.
‘C’mon, have a look. I’ll help you.’ The man reached for the newspaper and flipped it open to the crime section, before placing it back on the table in front of the boy. He watched Squirm’s good eye move to it and quickly scan all the headlines.
Nothing.
‘Oh!’ ‘The Monster’ said sarcastically. ‘Nothing in today’s paper. That’s strange, isn’t it? Would you like to check the earlier newspapers too?’
They locked eyes, or in Squirm’s case – eye.
‘I’ve kept them all.’ ‘The Monster’ jerked his head to his left. ‘They’re in the cupboard. Let me get them for you.’ He got up, walked over to the cupboards high on the south wall and opened the second one from the left. From inside, he retrieved a pile of folded newspapers.
‘Here they are,’ he said, dumping them on the table. ‘Every single LA Times since the day after I picked you up from outside your school.’
Squirm found it astonishing that ‘The Monster’ made it sound as though what had happened that day was nothing more than a regular school pick-up.
‘Go on,’ the man pushed. ‘Have a look.’
The boy reached for the first one at the top
of the pile, yesterday’s LA Times, and unfolded it. He found that the papers had already been opened on to the crime section. This time he took a little longer going over the articles and headlines. In the ‘Missing Persons’ section, he came across a few photographs, most of them of kids around his age or younger. His wasn’t one of them. He put the paper down and quickly reached for the next one – the LA Times from two days ago. Again, his picture wasn’t listed in the ‘Missing Persons’ section.
A cold, discomforting feeling began to grow inside the boy’s stomach.
Newspaper number three.
No pictures of him.
Number four.
A repeat of the previous three.
The discomfort turned to nausea, branching out to some sort of spike that stabbed at his heart.
Five.
Not a thing.
‘The Monster’ simply observed Squirm, his eyes sparkling with satisfaction.
Six.
No.
Last newspaper. The one dated the day after he’d been abducted.
The boy’s picture wasn’t there.
If there was still such a thing that Squirm called ‘world’, it collapsed right in front of him that morning.
OK, this is a dream. It has to be. There’s no other explanation for how fucked-up crazy this morning has become.
‘Nothing?’ ‘The Monster’ asked, his lips parting into a malicious grin.
Squirm’s attention didn’t break from the newspapers, which were now scattered all over the breakfast table. His good eye was still searching from paper to paper.
I must’ve missed it. It’s there somewhere. It has to be.
‘Looking at them some more isn’t going to make your picture miraculously appear on the paper, Squirm. Let me try to save you the trouble. It’s not there. It never has been.’
Squirm began shaking.
‘Haven’t you wondered how come I knew that today was your birthday, Squirm?’ The man shrugged. ‘I never asked you. You never offered it.’
The boy turned to look at ‘The Monster’. All the madness had happened so fast that morning that Squirm had never stopped to think about it.
How did he know it was my birthday?
‘That question can be answered by answering another couple of questions.’ Once again the ‘The Monster’ paused, lifting his eyebrows to emphasize his words. ‘How come there are no pictures of you in the papers? How come there’s no story about the boy who went missing after leaving school a week and a half ago?’
Squirm felt as though something had begun choking his heart inside his chest. He said nothing. He didn’t know what to say.
‘And the answer is – because you were never reported missing, Squirm.’
Fifty-Nine
‘Just turn the page,’ Sanders said. ‘Because here is where it starts to get interesting.’
Hunter did, and Sanders carried on with his account.
‘Five months after Ms. Dillard’s disappearance, in July two thousand and nine, Sandra Oliver, a twenty-four-year-old bank clerk from Fresno, also went missing. She lived by herself in the west part of town. Once again, the Missing Persons investigation concluded that whoever had taken her had done so from inside her own house and, once again, there was no sign of a break-in or a struggle. The abduction scene was almost a carbon copy of Ms. Dillard’s – relatively clean, no fingerprints, no mess, just a few fibers and a couple of shoeprints by the back door. The shoe size and sole pattern matched those found in Ms. Dillard’s abduction scene so suspicions of it being the same perpetrator were high.
‘Now, guess who’d been working in the neighbor’s house the same week of Ms. Oliver’s disappearance?’ Sanders didn’t wait for a reply. ‘That’s right, our friend Mathew Hade. He’d been doing several minor repairs to the property, as well as remodeling their front garden. All the work was completed just a couple of days before Sandra Oliver went missing. Once again, the police ended up knocking on Mr. Hade’s door, and once again they didn’t have enough to take him in. The detective in charge of the investigation managed to get a warrant to search Hade’s house but they found nothing incriminating. A week and a half after she went missing, Ms. Oliver’s body was found on a patch of green grass in the northern part of town.’
Hunter and Garcia’s interest grew.
‘Now tell me if this sounds familiar,’ Sanders continued. ‘She was found fully clothed, positioned in a human crucifix shape, with her legs fully extended but close together and her arms wide open, palms up. Ligature marks were found on both of her wrists and ankles.’
Hunter and Garcia both lifted their head to look at the Missing Persons detective.
‘Her picture follows,’ Sanders said expectantly, nodding at the file.
One more page flip and both detectives were held fast.
Sandra Oliver was a petite woman with very similar features to Nicole Wilson. Just like Ms. Wilson, she had a round face, which was also framed by shoulder-length dark-brown hair.
Hunter checked the next photograph along. It was a crimescene snapshot, showing the position in which Sandra Oliver’s body had been found. If her legs had been spread apart, she would’ve been left in the exact same position Nicole Wilson was found in, on a similar patch of green grass.
To better compare them, Hunter looked at Nicole Wilson’s crime scene photograph pinned to the picture board. This had indeed got interesting.
Sanders’ gaze followed his before he added, ‘The post mortem concluded that Ms. Oliver was tortured for several days prior to her demise,’
‘What sort of torture?’ Garcia asked.
‘She was severely beaten up. The skin under her clothes was black and blue, covered in bruises and hematomas, but no lacerations. For some reason, her torturer punished her body but left her face completely intact, as you can see from the photographs. According to the coroner, the blunt traumas to her body were inflicted by hand alone – punches to be more precise – by someone with relatively big fists.’ Sanders paused for breath. ‘Also, whoever punished her was kind of an expert. Superficial injuries only. No broken bones or internal organ damage.’
‘Was she sexually assaulted?’ Garcia again.
‘Repeatedly, but the assailant was smart enough to use a rubber. No semen was found. Unfortunately, the autopsy examination uncovered nothing else that could be construed as a clue to her killer’s identity. The investigation hit a wall.’
‘Cause of death?’
‘She suffocated. The coroner couldn’t be any more specific as to how it happened but it wasn’t by strangulation.’
Sanders gave Hunter and Garcia a moment to read over the autopsy report.
‘But it doesn’t end there,’ he proceeded. ‘A year after Ms. Oliver’s body was found, Mathew Hade relocated to Sacramento. Six months after the relocation, a twenty-year-old woman named Grace Lansing went missing in River Park, on the east side of the city. She was taken from inside her parents’ house while they were away on a weekend break. Just like Tracy Dillard, the college student who went missing in Fresno, Grace has also never been found.’
‘Did Mathew Hade make the POI list in Sacramento again?’ Garcia asked.
‘He did,’ Hunter was the one who answered, reading from the file.
‘Working in the proximities?’ Garcia half questioned, half guessed.
Sanders nodded. ‘He had found a job with a roofing company. The company was making repairs to one of the houses in the same street as Grace Lansing’s parents’. Once again, Mathew Hade had no alibi for the night Ms. Lansing went missing but, once again, the police couldn’t get anything concrete on him to justify an arrest.’
Hunter continued reading the file.
‘I know that all of this might mean absolutely nothing,’ Sanders said, lifting up both palms. ‘It could all be just a coincidence, but I wanted to bring the file to you and let you decide. Especially because of the last photograph.’
Hunter and Garcia turned to it. It was a mugshot
of Mathew Hade. With the exception of maybe a wrinkle or two, he looked exactly the same as he did in the file’s first photograph.’
‘A mugshot?’ Garcia said.
Sanders nodded. ‘That mugshot was taken seven months ago. Mathew Hade was taken in because he got involved in an altercation at a bar . . .’ Sanders paused.
‘OK,’ Garcia said.
‘In East Los Angeles,’ Sanders added. ‘Mathew Hade isn’t in Sacramento anymore. He’s here.’
Sixty
‘The Monster’ is lying.
That had been Squirm’s first thought after hearing the man’s words.
He must be lying. Of course my father reported me missing.
The man could see the boy’s demeanor changing. He returned to his seat, placed his elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers together, his hands directly in front of his chin.
‘You don’t believe me, do you, Squirm?’ he said, looking at the kid. ‘I don’t blame you. Why would you? But let me tell you a quick story which might change your mind.’
Squirm kept his gaze on ‘The Monster’.
‘A few months ago, I was having a quiet drink in this rundown joint not that far from your school. It was late, sometime between one and two in the morning, I think. The place wasn’t busy at all. I’d say maybe five or six people, max. I was just there, sitting at the bar, minding my own business, when one of the regulars walks in. The reason I know he was a regular was because the bartender greeted him by name – Pete. Well, this guy, Pete, already looked to be pretty hammered, but since he was a regular, the bartender didn’t seem to mind it.
‘Pete ordered a bourbon, neat, and took the stool next to where I was sitting. Strange, as the bar was pretty fucking empty, but hey, it’s a free country and a man has the right to sit wherever he likes, as long as he isn’t bothering anyone.’
Keeping his fingers interlaced, the man used his thumbs to rub his chin.
‘Once the bartender brought Pete his drink, he looked at me, probably because I was the only other person sitting at the bar, lifted his glass and in a stroppy way mumbled the word “Cheers”. Now I’m a polite guy, so in return I raised my glass and we both had a sip of our drinks. Pete then put his glass down, turned on his stool and slowly looked at me from head to toe. In a seedy bar like that, full of drunken people, that was all that was needed to either start a fight or a conversation. Well, I wasn’t in the mood for a fight so that night it was a conversation.
