by J. J. Stone
Valorie shrugged, rolling the unlit cigarette between her lips. “I guess a woman asking a police officer for directions is automatically a prostitute?”
“The statement from the officer says that you quote ‘flashed him and offered him a sexual favor in exchange for a light.’”
Valorie pitched forward onto the table and waved a hand at her loose shirt’s plunging neckline and uninhibited view of her chest. Brenda kept her eyes firmly on the woman’s face. “If I lean over, this happens. Hardly a flash.” Valorie resumed her sprawled pose and waved a hand in the air. “And that other bit is bull.”
Brenda closed the folder and handed it back to the officer. She collected herself before changing the conversation’s route. “Valorie, do you know where your son is?”
Valorie grunted and yanked the cigarette from her lips. “Knowing that kid, holed up at a friend’s house. Or maybe at his uncle’s.” She shook her head and attempted to run a hand through her dirty hair. “That kid is never around. Only shows up to eat my food and sleep in my house.”
“You mean he does what he’s supposed to do?” James said from his post in the corner.
Brenda glanced sideways at James and didn’t like the darkness that had settled over his features. His “bad cop” role in the interrogation didn’t appear to be an act anymore.
Valorie tossed him an incredulous scowl. “He’s been trouble since the day he learned how to walk. Excuse me for not wanting to snuggle up and read him a bedtime story every night.” She shook her head. “Never asked to be a mother.”
“Valorie, your son is currently in surgery to repair a shattered radius. The doctors are also trying to save his left foot from frostbite.” Brenda waited for Valorie to look at her. “Jake was abducted a week ago. The mother of one of his friends filed a missing person report on him.”
Valorie’s mouth drooped as the breath whizzed out of her lungs. “Jake was … abducted?” she gasped. Fury blossomed in her eyes. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
Brenda reopened her folder and slipped a page out from the middle of the stack. She scanned it for a moment then flipped it over and around so Valorie could read it. “The mother tried to contact you, but you weren’t at home and she didn’t have any other contact information for you. So, she filed the report herself.”
“Oh, wait, this was a week ago? I wasn’t here. I had a business meeting in Chicago.”
“How much did he pay you?”
Valorie mashed her hand into the top of the table and whipped around to glare at James. “What did you say to me?” She rose to her feet, tottering in her stilettos.
James suddenly lunged from the corner and came up mere inches from Valorie’s face. The rage smoldering in his face almost forced Brenda to intervene. She decided to give her boss the benefit of the doubt, despite the fact that even she was a bit taken aback. She remained silent as she watched James send Valorie’s vacant chair into the wall with his foot. Valorie backed away from him toward the window, wild panic all over her face, and cried out when her back connected with the cold glass. James followed her every step. “You might not have asked to be a mother, but do you think Jake asked for a mother like you?” James’s voice quivered under the pressure of barely-restrained words.
“I want to sit down,” Valorie said, her eyes wide as saucers.
Holding his stance, James slapped his hand against the window, directly to the left of Valorie’s head. He braced himself there, his eyes piercing straight through Valorie, his upper lip shivering almost imperceptibly. Brenda now began to fear she’d let his anger go past the point of no return. “You’re looking at abuse charges. Jake will never step foot in your house again. If it’s the last thing I do, I will see to it that Jake never has to have contact with you again.” James let his hand drop off the window but kept Valorie pinned, looming over her by almost a foot’s height difference.
“All because I left him alone for a couple of days?” The fear had drained from Valorie and her back straightened. Indignation filled her face and Brenda tensed in her seat, ready to leap between them. “You can’t take my kid for that.”
“Watch me,” James said, so close to Valorie’s face that his breath fluttered her feathery fringe.
Brenda pushed her chair back loudly and stood, watching James the whole time to see if he acknowledged her cue. He didn’t move, just continued his lethal stare-down with Valorie. Brenda cleared her throat and retrieved the folder from the table. She needed to regain control of the situation and her boss. “Miss Warner, we’ll be holding you for the next twenty-four hours.”
James finally stepped away from Valorie, giving her one last lethal glare before breaking eye contact. He briefly met Brenda’s scrutinizing amber eyes on his way out of the room. She tailed him out of the room, ignoring Valorie’s threats of a lawsuit as the officer proceeded to cuff her. “Your ‘bad cop’ got a little too bad,” Brenda said as she and James halted in the hallway.
“I didn’t do anything rough.” James paused as the officer herded Valorie out of the interview room. A sickly sweet smirk touched James’s lips as he shot Valorie a wink. This put even more arch in her back as she struggled against the officer. “Some people don’t deserve to be parents.”
Brenda heard the subtle shift in James’s tone and realized his reaction went beyond Jake and his mother.
James pointed his chin down the hallway. “See what you can find to validate her story about being in Chicago when Jake disappeared. And get someone to call CPS. I think Miss Warner is due for an interview with them.”
“I’ll see what I can do. As far as validating her story, if she was there as an escort, there probably won’t be much in terms of a paper trail.”
“Just do the best you can.”
Brenda sighed and tucked the folder under her arm. “Are you going back to the hospital?”
James shook his head and pulled out his phone. “I’ll leave Dade there. I’m going to go track down this hunter that found Jake, see if we can piece together anything from his statement.”
“Do you need me to go with you?”
He shook his head. “I need you here more.”
“I really think it would be best if someone went with you, given the weather.”
James flicked her a look that told her she had started to overstep her bounds. “I think I can handle it.”
“I can go.”
James and Brenda turned to Ada in unison. The analyst was standing in the hallway. Brenda wondered how long she had been there. She also wondered what she was thinking volunteering to get in a car with someone who didn’t even want her there.
“I’ve gone through everything we have. I don’t really know what else I can do. But I might pick up on something in the hunter’s statement.” Ada looked like a kid earnestly asking her parents if she could go to the mall with her friends.
The hallway fell uncomfortably silent. Brenda and Ada both waited for James to respond. Brenda fully expected him to turn and walk away.
“Fine. I’m leaving in two minutes,” James said without looking at Ada. He brushed past Brenda and headed for the front of the station.
Ada took a deep breath, almost as if she had just realized what she’d done. Brenda stepped toward her. “What are you doing?”
“Helping,” Ada said. She ducked back into their room to grab her coat and bag.
Brenda stood in the doorway, watching her get ready to leave. “Just watch yourself. Deacon’s a loose cannon all of a sudden, and I don’t think being stuck in a car with you is going to do much to diffuse him.”
Ada nodded and walked toward her, zipping up her bulky jacket. “I’ll be fine.”
Brenda watched her walk down the hall. “I hope so,” she said under her breath to Ada’s back.
CHAPTER 11
As the door swung shut
behind Eli Seran, he pounded his boots against the croaking pine floor of the ramshackle cabin. Clumps of soggy snow dropped to the floor and succumbed to the cabin’s toasty temperature within moments, turning his boot prints into small puddles. He pulled off his jacket and placed it on its peg while he discarded his heavy boots. As he kicked them to the side of the door, the heavy BOOM from each boot made the small window beside the door quiver. He also heard a small chirp from the basement, but decided to ignore it, intent on getting something into his aching stomach instead.
He clomped into the kitchen, his thick wool socks catching on small nicks in the hardwood floor. He took a brief detour to the wood stove and tossed another log inside. After glancing at his dwindling stash of firewood, he made a mental note to cut some more before the storm hit. Judging from the skies, the beginning of the storm would hit sometime that night.
Eli finished his journey to the kitchen and surveyed his dinner options. He really had wanted to save the simmering pot of stew for after the storm hit, but the savory scent was tormenting his nostrils. Having a small bowl now wouldn’t make too much of a dent in his supply, he reasoned. He fished a clean bowl out of his crowded sink and carefully ladled a portion of the thick brown stew into the bowl. Eli took a giant inhale and his stomach rumbled painfully. The long drive back from town had been a special form of torture on his hunger.
Below his feet, he heard and felt something topple over and land heavily in the dirt floor of the basement. The dishes in the sink clattered from the reverberation. Cursing under his breath, Eli brought his bowl over to the kitchen table and set it down. He then marched toward the basement door, taking extra care to stomp as loudly as he could.
He deftly undid the four locks holding the ragged door shut and forcefully heaved it open. The bottom of the door scraped along its long-worn trenches in the kitchen floor. The initial snap of the cold air gathering in the basement sent a brief shiver down Eli’s spine. He made sure to grab the flashlight off the kitchen counter before he began his descent into the earthen cellar.
The beam of the flashlight was plainly visible through the plumes of dust still floating around from whatever had fallen. As he stepped toward the far wall of the house he found a canning shelf flattened against the dirt floor. He shouted as he saw and smelled all the fruit preserves from the summer congealing into a collective sticky pool.
As he surveyed the damage with his flashlight, he caught movement from the bottom of the shelf where the strawberry preserves had been. He jerked the flashlight toward it and a ghostly face with giant eyes stared at him, red jelly dripping from his half-closed mouth like bloody vomit. Neither Eli nor the face moved. Then from deeper in the basement someone coughed, and the ghostly face jerked away from the beam of light and disappeared back into the untouched darkness of the farthest corner of the cellar.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Eli growled as he stomped in the direction the face had gone. He scanned the dirt floor with the flashlight and tracked blurry footprints to their owner. Bathed in the unrelenting light of Eli’s flashlight, the trembling body of the preserves thief curled itself into a tight, protective ball.
Eli landed a hard kick into the side of the human ball, chuckling as the quaking bundle of milky white flesh fell apart almost instantly.
The owner of the ghost face, a young boy no more than ten, squinted out as much of the light as he could and looked up at Eli with tear-streaked cheeks. “Hungry,” he rasped up at Eli.
“Well we can’t have that now, can we?” Eli went back to the toppled shelf and picked up a jar that had been spared a shattering. He strode back over to the boy and held it out to him. “Here, try a blackberry.”
The boy didn’t move, obviously trying to ascertain Eli’s suddenly friendly gesture. After a few moments of reasoning, he extended a bony hand toward the jar. His fingers had almost glanced it when Eli hurled the jar into the packed dirt floor, laughing as it burst into glass and jam. The boy recoiled back into his ball and let out a throaty wail. Beside him, another boy stirred from his emaciated sleep and just peered up at Eli, too weak to speak or move.
Eli nudged the sobbing boy with his foot. The boy uncurled enough to lay an eye on him. Eli motioned to the weaker boy. “Make sure you share with him. I don’t want him dying on me just yet.” He turned away from the boys and padded back to the basement stairs. As his foot touched the first step, he heard his cell phone ringing from the kitchen table.
Sprinting up the stairs and pausing only to fasten the locks again, Eli lunged at his phone and answered it just before the call went to voicemail. “Yes?” he asked, breathless.
“Why are you out of breath?” The cool voice on the other end made Eli straighten.
“Sir, I wasn’t expecting to hear from you so soon.” Eli lowered himself into his chair and cast a longing glance at the still-steaming bowl of stew.
“I take it the FBI is all over the boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And your friend stayed under the radar when he delivered him?”
“He gave my contact information, as you requested, and left the hospital before the FBI could question him directly.”
“Excellent.”
A wave of pride coursed through Eli. Praise from his leader was a rarity.
“The FBI will be coming to see you very soon. Did you make preparations like I instructed?”
“Yes, I got the shed ready.”
“Do exactly as we discussed. If the analyst is there, make sure she lives. I don’t care what happens to whoever else is with her.”
Eli frowned but said, “Yes, sir. What do you want me to do with the analyst?”
“Keep her with you and bring her to me as soon as the storm clears.”
Eli suddenly realized the responsibility he had been bestowed and felt pride well up. “Will do, sir. I’ll let you know as soon as I have her.”
“They’ll likely be trying to get to you today, before the storm. You need to be waiting for them.” Someone in the background spoke and the man cleared his throat. “Call me when it’s done.” The line went dead.
Eli placed the phone on the table and pulled the stew to him. He selected a spoon from the silverware cup in the middle of the table and dove into the stew. He needed something hearty in him before he ventured to his waiting post.
——
Ada cast another worried glance up at the graying sky and felt her stomach twitch. The skies were burgeoning with torrential sheets of snow. The storm had arrived sooner than forecasted. The streets were starting to thin out as residents retreated to the safety of their homes before the deluge.
The blizzard’s prelude snowfall was icing the road with a deceptively faint dusting that was already giving the SUV’s tires some trouble. As she burrowed down into her seat and pulled her jacket tighter, Ada was infinitely grateful she was not the one behind the wheel. She kept her face forward but snuck a side glance at James. They had been driving for almost an hour and not a word had been said.
The SUV slowed as they approached a small side street. They left the relative safety of the main road and crept onto the not-so-cleared rural road leading into a thick forest. Ada winced as the front of the car dipped violently down into a pothole. She heard the creak of the steering wheel leather under James’s vice grip and wondered if she was overestimating his “blizzard driving” comfort level.
A large truck bounced down the road toward them, staying true to its path in the very middle of the road. James tensed in his seat and eased the SUV as close to the edge of the road as he dared. As the truck clipped by them, James sighed forcefully and slapped his left hand against the steering wheel before latching on. “I hate trucks,” he said through a tight jaw. His first words of the trip shattered the thick silence in the car.
Ada felt a sudden surge of bravery. “I want to talk about Sacramento.
”
James didn’t answer her. He kept his gaze forward but Ada watched as both of his hands constricted around the steering wheel.
“You don’t have to say anything, but I need to deal with this.” Ada scooted herself back against her door and looked squarely at James. “I’m sorry for what I said. I’m sorry for what I did. It was all entirely unprofessional.”
The SUV’s GPS droned the next turn at them and James took a careful left onto an even smaller road with even higher snow banks. She didn’t know if his continued silence meant he was ignoring her or finally giving her the chance to make her case.
Ada sat back in her seat and looked out the windshield. “I don’t know what Janice’s reasons were for saying what she said.” Yes, I do. “I hate that my first reaction was to believe her. I have more reason to trust you than I do to trust her. I guess I’m only good at understanding people who are killers.” She snuck a brief sideways glance at James to see if her self-depreciating swipe had resonated with him. He was still staring straight ahead but one of his hands had fallen away from the wheel.
“I know that apologizing isn’t going to just erase what happened, but I need you to know that I regret what happened.” She made a point of turning toward him, making it nearly impossible for him to not know she was looking at him. “Can you just nod or something? So I know I’m not talking to a brick wall.”
The SUV came to a controlled stop at a shoulder. James threw the car into park and turned toward Ada. She recognized the hurt brewing in his eyes. He took a few moments to speak and when he did, his tone was low and controlled. “You had a break. Didn’t you?”
Ada flushed immediately. She contemplated lying to him but realized that was pointless. “I think so, yes.”
“Should I be ordering a psych eval for you?”
“No.” The thought of a total stranger probing her mind made Ada nauseous. “I went through all my steps. I’m fine.”
