They were all too tired to fight now.
As Darren got to work, Stitts picked up Georgina’s photograph next. He couldn’t imagine what it must’ve been like for Chase growing up after what had happened. In both her memories, the real one in which she was held captive, and the manufactured one where she’d gotten away, Chase had run.
She’d abandoned her little sister and saved herself. And now, ironically, Chase’s last hope might rely on Georgina still being out there. It was up to Georgian to save Chase, to alleviate her of thirty plus years of guilt.
“Done,” Darren said.
Stitts turned to face the Smartboard.
“Naw, I don’t think it worked.”
Darren frowned and turned back to the screen and punched a few more buttons. Again, the red dot appeared directly overtop Fly County.
“No, it’s working, but the algorithm still predicts Fly County.”
Stitts close his eyes and rubbed his temples.
Then he reached out and scooped all the folders and flung them to the floor.
“Fuck!” he yelled. “Where the hell are you!”
Chapter 53
The man led Chase to an adjacent room. Like the bathroom, this one was straight out of a 60s home and garden magazine, if the magazine had been left out in the sun since that time. There was a blue flannel bedspread on the single bed, or at least Chase thought it had been blue once — now it was mostly yellow and the faded teal. The only other items of note in this room where the photographs on the walls. They too were faded and the frames reminiscent of the time that they’d been hung. But while the sun had done its worst, it hadn’t bleached them entirely.
The man led Chase to the first image inside a warped wooden frame. It was clear by the degree of fading that this was the oldest photograph in the room.
Squinting, Chase leaned in close as the man described the scene in the image.
“This woman here in the white dress, that’s my mom,” Stitts said with a tone reminiscent of reverence. “She was a tough woman — tough but fair. The only thing she really wanted in life was a big family, like the one that she’d grown up in. But she wasn’t from here, Chase. She was born and raised in Arizona — I forget the city. Anyways, she moved here with my dad for work.”
“Why isn’t your dad in the photo?” Chase asked absently.
The man shrugged.
“He left shortly after my brother and I were born. Don’t really remember him much,” Stitts replied. Then he moved to the next image, which again showed his mother, but this time two young boys were clinging to her white dress. “That one’s me and that’s my brother, Tim.”
Chase nodded. She hadn’t realized that Stitts had a brother. Of all the times she’d mentioned Georgina, granted there hadn’t been that many, Stitts hadn’t offered any information about his own family.
Until now, that is.
The man guided Chase to the third photograph. This one depicted the same two boys, only they were nearly as tall as their mother now. The woman, who had black hair to her shoulders and high cheekbones, appeared to be sporting the same white dress, but given that her posture was now stooped, it piled at her feet.
“Me and my brother were older in this one — you can see this very house in the background.”
Chase squinted, but all she could make out was a faded silhouette of a building.
They moved on to the next photo.
This one was only of the two boys — grown men now, grown men that Chase recognized as Stitts and his brother, who had served them pasta the night before.
“This is after my mom died,” Stitts said. They didn’t linger on this photograph for long before moving on.
“And these are the girls that we took in, that we protected, because Tim and I always wanted a large family, as well. Here you can see how cute Riley, Portia, Melanie, and Sue-Ellen were when they were little. And in this photograph,” Stitts said, sliding over to the next. “they’re older and wearing the same white dress that my mother did.”
Chase tilted her head to one side and examined the photo. The four women were standing with their arms around each other’s waists, while Stitts and his brother stood in the background.
Chase realized that she’d been breathing heavily during the entire family history tour. Her hands throbbed something fierce, and her headache was so powerful that her left eye twitched with every heartbeat.
How long has it been since I’ve slept? She wondered. A day? Two?
Like everything else, she couldn’t remember.
“And here’s my favorite image. You see Riley there? That’s right after she had her baby. You know, we tried forever with the others — with Portia, Melanie, and Sue-Ellen. But, for whatever reason, God wasn’t having it. But boy, did we try, Chase. Sure, Tim and I like helping others, but we wanted to make our family grow the old-fashioned way. I guess, it just wasn’t in the cards. That’s why we went out and saved the other girls — Andy, Donna, Savanna, and Joanna. To grow our family. And, when they’re old enough, we’ll try again,” the man chuckled. “For now, we just feel blessed to have little Georgina.”
The man’s dirty thumb pressed up against the glass just next to the little girl’s face.
“This mustn’t have been that long ago,” Chase remarked.
“No; two years, maybe three.”
Chase looked about the room, realizing that they had come full circle and that this was the last photograph.
“How come there aren’t any more recent photographs?”
The man guided her towards the door.
“That’s a long story, but the short version is that we don’t get out much anymore. The girls go shopping every once in a while, but we like it here better. Out there, bad things can happen to you. In here, Tim and I will protect you.”
Chase found herself nodding, although she wasn’t exactly sure why.
Something bad had happened to her out there — something very bad.
“And, besides, we really only take a picture when we add someone new to our family. Which reminds me; Chase, how would you like to get your photograph put up on the wall?”
“I’d like that,” Chase said. “I’d like that very much.”
Stitts smiled and guided her to the room next door.
“That makes me happy. But first, you need to change into something more appropriate.”
Chapter 54
“Run!” Stitts shouted. “Run, Chase, run!”
Stitts jarred awake and his hand shot out. His fingers brushed up against his now cold coffee, spilling it over the few photos that remained on the table in front of him.
“Shit,” he swore, sitting up and quickly trying to sweep the excess coffee away.
Jordan hurried over with a roll of paper towels and lent a hand.
“I didn’t know if I should wake you,” he said as he cleaned. “You were shouting something about running… about Chase.”
Stitts rubbed his eyes.
“I must have passed out. What time is it?”
Darren checked his computer.
“3:45,” he said with a yawn.
“Shit,” Stitts swore again. He couldn’t believe he’d fallen asleep for as long as he had.
He scooped his phone off the desk and checked for messages. There weren’t any, so he went ahead and dialed Chase’s number. It rang once, and then an operator informed him that her voicemail was full.
Stitts tried the locater app next, but there was still no signal.
He closed his eyes briefly and some of his dream came back to him. In it, he was standing on the sidewalk when a van pulled up and a man with aviator sunglasses leaned out.
The man said something about how he’d taken Chase and Georgina and the other girls, and now, thirty years later, he’d taken four more.
“We should get some rest,” Jordan said. “Proper rest. Terrence will be here in a few hours.”
Thirty years later…
Stitts blinked again and ignored Jo
rdan’s comment.
“What if… what is this is cyclical, for some reason. What if there were more kidnappings 30 years before Georgina and Chase were taken?”
Now it was Jordan’s turn to yawn.
“It’s a dead end, Stitts. Give it up.”
“It can’t be,” he replied, unsure of whether or not he was addressing Jordan or if he was just speaking to himself. “It can’t be a dead end. Darren, can you look back even further?”
Darren and Jordan exchanged a look.
“What are you thinking? Like a cult, thing? A generational thing?” Darren asked.
Stitts shrugged.
“Cuz, if it wasn’t for your partner, we would never have gone back even 30 years. You said so yourself, this much of a break between abductions is uncommon.”
“Humor me for the last time, Darren. Just check if any kids went missing from the fair 30 years before Georgina. Look for any kids how disappeared from the late sixties, early seventies.”
“I’ll give it a shot,” Darren said. “But if we couldn’t even figure that out about Teresa, Kim, and Anastasia, I doubt we’ll come across anything.”
Jordan finished patting the images dry and then tossed the sopping paper towels into the garbage can across the room.
“You guys waste your time if you want, but I’m going to take off.”
Stitts didn’t say anything; his gaze was focused on Darren as he worked at his computer.
It was a long shot, he knew. An impossibly long shot. Child abductors didn’t take thirty-year vacations between crimes. They weren’t cicadas. They didn’t just come out every seven years or so then go back into hibernation.
No, they escalated. The time between crimes got shorter.
“Got something,” Darren said, and Stitts sat up straight in his chair.
Jordan who was partly out of the door, poked his head back in.
“What did you find?”
“Look at the Smartboard,” Darren instructed.
Stitts his eyes flicked over as the electronic screen flickered and lit up. When it finally loaded, there were two grainy, black-and-white photographs on the screen.
Photographs of two young boys.
“What the hell is this?” Jordan asked.
“Two kids went missing from the Franklin fair in 1968. So far as I can tell in the five seconds you gave me to search, they were never found again.”
Jordan sucked his teeth.
“So now we’ve moved on from missing girls to missing boys. Wrap it up fellas and get some rest.”
Stitts stared at the pictures, tilting his head to one side. The boys looked anywhere between 6 and 10 years old — it was tough to tell based on the quality of the images.
“From the Williamson fair in Franklin, you said?”
Darren nodded.
“Yeah, it was called something different back then — the Royal County Fair, or some shit. But so far as I can tell it was the same one, or at least very similar.”
These boys go missing in the 60s, then 30 years later Georgina and Chase and the others are abducted. Thirty years after that, Stacy, Tracy, Becky, and Stephanie go missing.
It sounded like a coincidence, but Stitts hated coincidences.
“Jordan,” he said absently.
When the man didn’t answer, Stitts turned around.
Jordan was already halfway down the hall. Stitts hurried after him.
“Hey, Jordan, do you have that list of employees? The ones for the people who work at the fair?”
The man looked at him as if he had three heads.
“The ones that Detective Mayberry cooked up? Yeah, I got them. But like he said, they were all cons.”
“Yeah, I know that. But I’m not interested in the cons… I’m interested in the few that don’t have a record. C’mon, man, please.”
Jordan looked skyward.
“Fuck, okay, one last look and then I’m getting the hell out of here.”
Chapter 55
“Here are all the dresses we have,” the man said, waving his hand across the armoire. “They’re all the same, except for the sizes. But I’m sure that you can find something that will fit. You’re shorter than most of the other girls, so you might have to roll it up, but that shouldn’t be a problem.”
Chase stared at the long matronly dresses, the hams of which had yellowed with either age or someone’s sweat.
She didn’t really care which.
“All right, then,” Stitts said, placing a hand gently on her shoulder. Chase turned and looked up at his warm brown eyes. “I’ll give you some privacy.”
Chase nodded and before she knew it, she was alone in the room.
The first thing she did was run her fingers across the hangers that held the dresses, feeling the fabric rub against her swollen and blistered skin. It felt weird, as if her hands weren’t really hers.
Then she separated the dresses one by one, spacing them out equally. When Chase was done, she looked for the shortest one and pulled the hanger out of the armoire.
Chase placed it up against her body and saw that while it was going to be a couple of inches too long, the rest might fit. Glancing around, she saw an old wooden vanity in the corner of the room, which was obviously part of the set that the armoire came from.
There was probably a bedframe somewhere that matched as well, but the bed in the other room was different.
Not that it mattered, anyway.
Chase walked up to the mirror and for the first time in a while saw her own reflection.
There were dark circles beneath her eyes and to say that her short brown hair was a mess was a dramatic understatement.
She pulled the hair off her left temple and saw the Band-Aid that Stitts had put there. He hadn’t done a very good job and Chase could see the swollen and bruised area, and even a little bit of the cut, extending out from beyond the width of the Band-Aid.
She let her hair go and then looked at her body, with the dress still on the hanger pressed up against it.
In her mind, Chase was already up on that wall, already in one of the photographs wearing the white dress. In her mind, she was already a part of Stitts’s family.
Without thinking, Chase started to undress, pulling off her soiled jeans and sweat-stained T-shirt.
She kept her bra and underwear on and then slid the dress over top.
It was airy and breezy and while the fabric was worn and subsequently rough against her skin, it was definitely a step up from her jeans.
Chase leaned back and looked at her reflection again.
It wasn’t a particularly flattering dress: whoever had worn it before her was taller and considerably plumper, but it didn’t look that bad, either. At least the color of the dress matched her skin tone.
With a satisfied nod, Chase turned back to her clothes that she’d thrown on the floor in a heap. Unsure of what to do next, she started to fold them. As she did, something sharp jabbed her finger and she pulled back.
Whatever it was, it was sharp enough to draw a drop of blood through the bandages. It didn’t hurt — not really; most the sensation in her hands had been reduced to a dull throb.
Curious, Chase picked up her jeans and rooted through her pockets. There was nothing in them — no wallet, no car keys, no ID. Nothing, except for a four-inch piece of glass.
Where did this come from? she wondered.
An image of a glass of water that someone — Riley — had handed her flashed in her mind then.
Her eyes darted from the piece of glass to the torn bandage on her finger. Without thinking, she unraveled some of the bandages and wrapped the piece of glass in it. Then she reached beneath her dress and put the tucked the glass into the waistband of her underwear.
Then she sighed deeply and looked at herself one final time in the mirror before calling out.
“I’m ready,” Chase said. “Stitts, I’m ready now.”
Chapter 56
“Seven employees… can you believe that shit
? Only 7 of 143 employees don’t have criminal records,” Jordan said.
Stitts nodded. He still wasn’t sure if he was onto anything, of if he was, as Jordan had told him multiple times, barking up the wrong tree.
Amber Alert Page 18
