Amber Alert

by Patrick Logan

  Stitts rolled his eyes and turned his gaze to the window.

  Ah, the irony; an ex-heroin addict chastising someone for smoking. What is this world coming to?

  “You know,” Stitts began, before shaking his head. “Never mind.”

  The grin slid off Chase’s face.

  It wasn’t like Stitts to speak as much as he was, and it definitely wasn’t like him to start a sentence and not finish it. He was usually so measured with his words.

  Clearly, there was something on the man’s tongue, something that he wanted to express but just couldn’t bring himself to say.

  Chase let it go.

  Everyone had their secrets; if what was on his mind was that important, it would come out eventually.

  Secrets…

  Chase had lied about what happened with Louisa in the hospital; she told Stitts that the woman had been zonked the entire time. She didn’t mention the vision of the makeshift cells, of the girl digging furiously in the dirt.

  But it had happened; Chase could lie to Stitts, but not to herself. Every time she closed her eyes now, she saw the young girl’s face with the muddy tears, the blisters on her hands. Her breathless words.

  I’m going crazy. It’s official. Too much heroin scrambled your brains, Chase.

  “I remember this place,” she said, for no other reason but to break the silence. “I grew up in Springhill, about 40 minutes outside of Nashville. A small, rural community that consisted of a couple dozen tight-knit families. We were close back then — you know, all the kids riding their bikes around until the street lights came on, Fourth of July barbecue cookouts, all that Americana bullshit. But that was before…” Chase let her sentence to trail off.

  Just thinking about that time brought back memories of her sister, and for once they weren’t nightmarish in nature. Her sister, with the bright orange hair, smiling and laughing and generally causing trouble for Chase. That’s what it was like back then.

  She sighed.

  “You know, it wasn’t just that Georgina and the others were gone, that we couldn’t find them. I mean, for months this was all anyone ever talked about. And at first, the community rallied together, combining our efforts to search day and night. But slowly, as the days without finding her became weeks and then a month, things started to change. It was like this black cloud was hanging over our family, you know? Eventually, the neighbors stopped delivering casseroles, the ‘hellos’ in the morning were more abbreviated and perfunctory than actual greetings. And then, people stopped talking to us altogether. It was as if our presence was a constant reminder of our collective failure as a community. A failure to protect our children. I know, it’s silly; I mean, me and my parents did nothing wrong — we were the ones who were suffering. But eventually, the memories became too much for even us to handle. Then, one day when I was seven, almost eight, my mom and dad made the decision to just pack up and leave. I screamed and fought, of course, but I couldn’t change their minds. They’d already decided on getting a fresh start somewhere else, somewhere people didn’t look at us like a bunch of pariahs.”

  Chase was surprised by the deluge of information that kept coming out of her mouth — it wasn’t like her to be so open, especially when it came to Georgina. In fact, she’d probably said more in the past ten minutes than she had her entire time at Grassroots. But once Chase got started, it was nearly impossible to stop. There was just something about the air, about the way you could smell barbecue anywhere in Tennessee regardless of the time of day. And, in turn, this triggered memories of Fourth of July cookouts, of her childhood, memories that were so strong that they would drive her insane if she didn’t speak out.

  But you’re already insane, Chase. That shit at the hospital? That was you finally losing your mind.

  Chase finally fell silent as she pulled up to a small, squat building. A frown immediately formed on her face; this wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting. There wasn’t even a sign outside indicating that this was a government building, the headquarters for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

  “This… this can’t be right. You sure this is the address that Director Hampton gave us?” Chase asked, falling back into professional mode. She checked the directions on her phone and realized that they weren’t even technically in Nashville.

  “Yeah, this is the place,” Stitts informed her. “Apparently, the TBI wants to keep media involvement to a minimum. It was decided that setting up operations on the outskirts would raise fewer eyebrows.”

  Chase’s frown became a scowl. Fewer eyebrows… in political speak, this meant that an election was coming up and they didn’t want four missing girls to put a black eye on a mayoral campaign. Finding Stacy Peterson and the other missing girls? Oh, that was secondary, of course.

  God bless America.

  “Figures,” she grumbled.

  “Chase?” Stitts said suddenly.

  Chase turned to face her partner and was surprised by the expression on his face. He seemed… sad. Sad and melancholy.

  “I know that I went along with you to see Dr. Matteo and Louisa, but we need these cases separate. If we want to find Stacy and the others, we have to keep them separate. This case… this case has nothing to do with your sister,” Stitts said, sounding almost ashamed. “I know that it’s going to be tough for you, for both of us, but we need to separate the past from the present.”

  Chase felt her lips curl downward as she recalled what Dr. Matteo had preached, about living in the moment, in the present, forgetting about the past and ignoring the future.

  You slurped the goddamn Kool-Aid up good, didn’t you, Stitts?

  Stitts stared at her for a moment, expecting a response, some sort of confirmation, but Chase took a page out of his playbook and said nothing.

  You’re wrong, she thought. This is related. Whoever took Stacy Peterson… they know what happened to Georgina. And I will stop at nothing until I find out.

  Chapter 19

  “Terrence Conway, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation,” the middle-aged light-skinned black man said, extending his hand.

  Chase stepped in front of Stitts and shook it.

  “FBI Special Agent Chase Adams,” she said quickly. “Why aren’t you set up in Nashville?”

  The question caught the man by surprise, and his expression faltered, but only for a second. He regained his composure and shook Stitts’s hand next.

  “The Mayor wanted us to set up outside the city,” he informed them after Stitts introduced himself. “Come with me please, we’re just about to start a debriefing.”

  Chase, a sour expression on her face, followed the man who walked briskly down a narrow hallway adorned with photographs of police officers. Although the building was nondescript from the outside, it had evidently been used as a task force headquarters for other cases. Chase racked her mind, trying to think back to what happened after Georgina had been taken, if she had come to this very building.

  She couldn’t recall; outside of the man in the van, her recollection of the days that followed the incident was muddy at best.

  Terrence led them to a conference room that held maybe two dozen men and women, half of whom were sporting police garb from one county or another.

  “Special Agents Stitts and Adams have arrived from Quantico to help us out. They’ll be working directly with me for the duration of the investigation,” Terrence said without preamble. All eyes were suddenly on the three of them standing at the front of the room.

  Terrence made his way to a white board off to one side, passing in front of Chase as he did. Stitts leaned out to get a better look, blocking the photograph that Terrence was clearly indicating.

  “Stacy Peterson, seven years old. Missing two days ago from her home in Nashville. She was riding her bike with one of her friends when said friend’s mother called her in for dinner. Twenty minutes later, when Mrs. Peterson called to Stacy,” Terrence moved to another photograph before continuing, “she discovered the girl’s bike l
ying on the driveway. There was no sign of a struggle and no one in the neighborhood claims to have seen anything out of the ordinary. So far, none of the hundreds of tips that have come in have led anywhere.”

  Chase, frustrated that she couldn’t see the photographs properly, stepped in front of Stitts.

  And then she gasped.

  It wasn’t Stacy Peterson on the board — it was her sister. It was Georgina Taylor Adams. It was Georgina with her cute little curly pigtails and button nose, the smattering of freckles across the bridge. The smile. The laugh. The —

  “You okay?” Stitts whispered in her ear.

  Chase blinked twice, and the image of Georgina disappeared. In its place was Stacy Peterson, who had long brown hair instead of curly pigtails, and brown eyes instead of Georgina’s blue.

  Chase shook her head.

  “I’m fine,” she grumbled. She moved away from her partner so as to better hear Terrence’s update.

  “We’re coming up on the 48-hour mark since she went missing, and there’s been no contact from whoever took her. I’ve gone ahead and authorized the Petersons’ request to put up a reward. There will be a press conference this afternoon that I’ll host—” Terrence turned to Stitts and Adams, “—with the FBI Agents at my side. For now, the best course of action is for you to stick to your assigned units and continue to comb the streets. Ask anyone if they saw anything out of the ordinary in the weeks leading up to Stacy’s disappearance. Any lurkers, any suspicious vehicles—”

  “What about the other girls who went missing?” Chase interrupted.

  Heads turned to face her, but Chase’s focus remained on Terrence. Based on her recent experience in Chicago and Boston, she expected the man to immediately get his back up, for his face to harden in an expression that meant, how dare you interrupt me when I’m speaking, little woman. But to her surprise, Terrence remained stoic.

  “None of the other girls were from Nashville,” the man said as he reached into a folder on the desk in front of him. As he pulled out three other photographs and placed them on the board beneath Stacy Peterson’s image, he continued, “Becky Thompson, seven years old, went missing from Triune a week before Stacy. Two weeks before that, Tracy Weinberg, six years old, disappeared from Paytonsville. And finally, Stephanie McMahon, five years old, was taken from Franklin at the beginning of the month.”

  Franklin… the Williamson County Fair is in Franklin… the fair that we were at when Georgina was kidnapped…

  The room was suddenly hot and oppressive and was difficult for Chase to draw a full breath.

  Why don’t you get into the van, girls, it’s so nice and cool in here and it’s so hot outside.

  “It’s happening again,” Chase whispered as she collapsed.

  Chapter 20

  “I’ll be fine, really,” Chase said, sipping a glass of water. “Drove all night and I’m not used to the heat.”

  After her little episode, Stitts had helped her to a private office. When Terrence finished his debriefing, he’d joined them.

  And, for once, a man in power didn’t dote on her, question her, feel sorry for her.

  Although they’d just met, Chase thought she might be able to work with Terrence and not battle him as she’d done so many others during her short career.

  “You said something about this happening again, what did you mean by that?” Terrence asked.

  Chase, still feeling weak, pointed at the briefcase she’d brought with her from Quantico. Stitts, a frown on his face, went over and grabbed it and passed it to her.

  After catching her breath, and confirming that she wouldn’t pass out or swoon or do whatever the hell she had back in the conference room, Case opened the case. Then she proceeded to pull out several files and arrange them on the desk. She opened each one in sequence, made sure that they were in chronological order, and then gestured for the men to take a look.

  Chase took a step back; she didn’t need to see the files. She’d looked at them so many times that they had been committed to memory.

  “What—where did you get these?” Stitts asked, a curious expression on his face.

  “I collected them over the years,” she said quickly. Wanting to change the subject, she pointed a finger at the very first folder, the one containing a grainy image of a young girl. “So far as I can tell, this is the first case that fit the profile. Teresa Long was kidnapped in 1984,” Chase pointed at the subsequent photos as she spoke. “Two other girls went missing in ‘85, and one in ‘87.”

  By the time she got to the last photo, Chase was shaking so badly that Stitts proactively got behind her in case she fainted again.

  1987, Chase thought as she stared at the photo of her sister’s face. The year that you were taken from me, Georgina.

  “In ‘87… ‘87… In 1987 it…”

  Stitts rescued her, but he looked none too pleased about it.

  “After ‘87 there was about a thirty-year break in abductions. With these cold cases, and the most recent ones, the girls were all between the ages of five and eight years of age. They were also all taken while outside and not abducted from their homes.”

  Chase, who still couldn’t look away from Georgina’s photo, was nevertheless taken aback by Stitts’s words. Either he was the world’s fastest reader, or he had prepared some of this speech in advance.

  “I see the similarities,” Terrence said hesitantly, “but are you sure that they’re connected? I mean, we haven’t even gone on record about the recent abductions, confirming that there is a serial kidnapper out there. And this… thirty years between abductions? I mean, the FBI would know more than the TBI, but I think a break of that long between events would be exceedingly rare.”

  The man paused and chewed the inside of his cheek.

  “As for the age and gender of the girls, and even the way that they were abducted… it’s not unique. In fact, when I first investigated Stacy Peterson’s case, I pulled up all the missing persons’ reports of children in the US over the last 15 or so years. There was a 4 to 1 ratio of females to males, and girls under ten were five times more likely to be abducted than teenagers. And of those young girls who went missing, only three were as a result of home invasions — when the perp wasn’t the other parent, that is.”

  Now it was Chase’s turn to be surprised. Not only did Terrence not seem to give a shit that she was a feisty female, but he’d apparently done his research on the missing girls.

  “There’s more,” Chase said after a hard swallow. “All of these abductions came in the late summer and early fall. Also, there were never any ransom demands and no—” her voice hitched, “—bodies were ever found.”

  Terrence looked away from Chase and observed the photographs on the desk, his head tilted. It was clear that he, like Stitts, was having a hard time buying what she was selling.

  “Maybe,” he said with a grunt. “But it’s a stretch. Like I said, 30 years between — wait, Georgina Adams?” Terrence’s suddenly wide eyes darted from the photographs to Chase. “Is she… is she related to you?”

  Chase thought about lying, about saying, no, they weren’t related, or maybe claiming that they were just cousins who had never met.

  But in the end, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  She couldn’t pass off Georgina that way.

  “She’s my sister,” Chase said at last, tears forming in her eyes. “And I was with her when she was taken.”

  Chapter 21

  “I can’t believe you did that to me,” Stitts snarled.

  Chase raised her eyes.

  “What? Do what to you?”

  Stitts waved a hand over the photographs laid out on the desk.

  “So, it’s going to be like that? You didn’t think about giving me a head’s up before you ambushed the guy like that? I’m not an idiot, I know that you think this is about your sister. But you could have told me—”

  Chase’s eyes narrowed.

  “Yeah, and if I told you in advance, what
would you have done? Would you have run to Dr. Matteo and struck up another deal? Would you have told me to fuck off and run along home?”

  Now it was Stitts’s turn to scowl. There was no way that he would ever tell her to fuck off, but still…

  She couldn’t tell him because he would have spent the entire ten plus hour car ride trying to convince her that this wasn’t about Georgina, that the cases were separate.

  But Stitts was wrong.

  Chase sighed.

  “I’m sorry, okay? But you knew… you knew what this was all about, Stitts. You knew this was about my sister the day that I showed up in Director Hampton’s office with the cold case folder before we even went to Vegas. And after Vegas? You backed me when I confronted Hampton, told him that I needed this case. So, don’t go acting all high and mighty like you had no idea what was going on. Oh, sure, you gave me a one liner once we arrived — Uh, Chase, you know this isn’t about her, right? — but you knew the whole time. As for my approach… you, what? Expected me to lay it out nicely for Terrence? Excuse me, kind sir, I don’t mean to interrupt a man of your stature, but could you please humor me by looking at these case files for me? I mean, if you have the time, of course. Here, want me to fluff you while you read? Tickle your balls?”