Last Seen

by Rick Mofina

“That’s the only word to describe it,” Pam told the agents.

  “Were they arguing?” Malko asked.

  “I’m not sure. But at one point it looked like the man touched Faith’s hand. Then, when he shifted in his seat, his jacket opened a bit and I saw the handle of a gun in a shoulder holster.”

  “You’re absolutely certain that it was a gun?”

  “Yes.”

  Malko glanced at Marsh, who made a note.

  “Go on,” Malko said.

  “Later—” Pam cupped her hands to her face “—this keeps getting stranger, but later, when we were leaving, I saw Faith with the man in the parking lot next to her car. I mean, what are the chances that we’d be in that lot at the same time? It’s almost as if I was meant to see this.”

  “Did Faith see you?”

  “Oh, no, I’m sure of it. There was some distance between us.”

  “Were they driving together?”

  “No, but I saw Faith touch his arm before they parted.”

  “Was your friend Marcia with you at the time? Did she witness this, as well?” Malko’s face betrayed no emotion.

  “Yes.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes. I believe I saw that same man again the day Gage disappeared.”

  “Where?” Malko asked.

  “He was at the fairgrounds, standing at the edge of the crowd during the press conference.”

  The only sound audible for next moment was the scratching of Marsh’s pen as she completed notes.

  “Please don’t tell Faith I told you this. Please.”

  “I assure you,” Malko said, “all information is confidential and we request that you not share any aspect of this conversation with anyone, either. It could be integral to the investigation.”

  Malko absorbed Pam Huppkey’s revelations. She had given them a new lead.

  Pieces were beginning to fit.

  38

  Oak Brook, Illinois

  After Pam Huppkey left the room Malko had stared at his notes while tapping his pen on the table.

  “What do you think?” Marsh asked.

  “We need to find this guy. We may have something here.”

  Malko and Marsh moved fast in the minutes and hours following Pam’s account of Faith’s meeting with an armed man who she’d later spotted at the fairgrounds.

  Pam had consented to let the FBI scrutinize her credit card records. From her purchase of a salad lunch, it didn’t take long for them to pinpoint the date and time she was at the food court at the Oak Brook Victory Mall.

  Malko reached out to the mall’s security office and was connected to chief of operations, Norm Garfield.

  “Absolutely, we archive all of our surveillance footage. Our system’s state-of-the-art,” Garfield said over the phone as Malko and Marsh headed westbound on I-88 in an unmarked Bureau car.

  Less than half an hour later, Garfield greeted them at the administration office, extending his meaty hand over the reception counter.

  “Terrible thing about the Hudson boy. Happy to help. Follow me.”

  Garfield walked with a limp, then told them the reason. “Twenty-six years on the job with Chicago PD and in my last week before retirement we come up on a bank heist in progress and I take a round in the leg. But I did better than the perps. They died on the street.”

  Garfield opened the door to the mall’s dimly lit security control room with its vast console of monitors and control panels.

  “We’ve got nearly a hundred cameras throughout the mall,” he said. “We monitor all entrance/exits, all storefronts on all levels. All common areas—elevators, hallways, the parking lots, the loading zones. We even have them set up to watch the roof.”

  “You’re covered well,” Malko said.

  “We’ve got the capacity to archive footage for years. We monitor for everything from terror threats, to missing kids, to car thefts, parking lot accidents, slip-and-fall liability claims—the whole shebang.”

  Garfield introduced Malko and Marsh to Len Lockerby, the duty officer in the swivel chair operating the console.

  Lockerby shook hands with the agents.

  “I think I’ve got what you want here, based on the date and times you provided,” he said. “Watch monitor twenty-one.”

  In the crisp, clear, slow-motion images of shoppers eating in the food court, Malko recognized Pam Huppkey. Not far from her table, on the opposite side of a latticed wall, he found Faith Hudson with a man.

  “That’s our subject.” Malko produced a pen and nearly touched the screen. “Can you follow this man’s movements?”

  Lockerby manipulated the controls. Camera perspectives shifted several times as they tracked the man leaving the food court and walking with Faith through the mall to an exit/entrance, then the parking lot.

  The cameras covering section fourteen captured Faith placing her right hand on the man’s arm before they parted.

  “Follow him,” Malko said, wishing they’d had surveillance of this caliber at the fairgrounds and near the strip mall Dumpster where they’d found Gage’s shoe.

  Lockerby operated the controls so that the images shifted to the man getting into a pickup truck.

  “Looks like a Ram 1500, 2016,” Marsh said.

  “Can you pull in tight enough to get his plate?” Malko asked.

  “Not a problem.”

  Lockerby activated the zoom function and easily captured the Illinois plate, prompting Malko and Marsh to jot it down in their notebooks.

  “Okay, just freeze everything for a moment.” Malko and Marsh reached for their phones and launched a series of urgent calls, making demands for the tag to be run immediately through a spectrum of databases, ranging from the Illinois Department of Motor Vehicles, state and county records, sex offender registries, to regional and national law enforcement and terror list databases, as well as the FBI–run National Crime Information Center and Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. Then for the next several minutes, the two agents took notes as information streamed back to them.

  The man who Faith had met was Roy Simon Tate, a Deputy US Marshal.

  “We’ve got more.” Marsh, phone pressed to her head, nodded, then signaled for Malko and whispered in his ear. “Tate’s assigned to Witness Security Program.”

  Malko and Marsh exchanged a silent look.

  “We need to confirm if the Marshals Service is running anything involving the family,” Malko told her. “And that’s not going to be easy. It’s going to take calls by people far above our pay grade.”

  Malko’s phone rang with a callback with additional information.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” the FBI agent on the line said to Malko. “From the years 2013 to 2016, Roy Tate moonlighted as a security consultant for the River Ridge Fairgrounds.”

  “That’s confirmed?”

  “It is. Apparently he came close to a conflict of interest disciplinary issue with the Marshals Service and ceased his relationship with the fairgrounds administration.”

  After the call ended, Malko stared at the frozen screen while mentally taking stock of the new information they’d uncovered concerning Faith Hudson and Roy Tate.

  This took everything to another level. Malko didn’t know what they were dealing with here, but they had to be getting closer to the truth behind Gage Hudson’s disappearance—what that truth was, he didn’t know.

  Not yet.

  39

  River Ridge, Illinois

  On the screen, two toddlers laughed and splashed joyfully in a wading pool.

  “That’s Gage and Ethan in our backyard.”

  Rory Clark had turned his tablet and the home video to Leon Lang and Rachel Price, who were interviewing him in his office in the old municipal building. The River Ridge detectives were working th
rough their list by coordinating appointments visiting people where they worked or lived.

  Things went faster that way.

  “My wife put all the family videos in one big folder. This one of the boys is my favorite,” Clark said. “Don’t know what prompted me to look at it last night. Maybe it was your call.” The squeals of delight ended when Clark closed the video, tears standing in his eyes. “Any leads on Gage? Ethan asks us every hour if you’ve found him.”

  “We’re following up on several possibilities and we’re hopeful,” Price said.

  Sadness washed over Clark as he nodded.

  “Sam and I have probably known the family longer than anyone else. We met them twelve years ago when they moved into the neighborhood, just four doors down. Before Gage and our son, Ethan, were born. The boys grew up together.”

  At the outset, the soft-spoken civil engineer with the county, who managed drainage, utility and transportation projects, was reluctant to talk to them at all. He couldn’t, “in all good conscience,” betray what he felt was the Hudsons’ confidence—their “private matters.”

  “We assure you, all information we collect is confidential,” Price said.

  Clark stuck out his bottom lip. “You just want me to answer questions and give you my observations?”

  “That’s right, sir,” Lang said.

  “And this is all confidential?”

  “That’s right.”

  Clark picked up an old slide rule and moved the cursor thoughtfully, then moved the slide as if calculating how to respond.

  “Sir, all information is critical,” Lang encouraged him. “You may have the piece that could help us locate Gage.”

  Clark nodded, put the slide rule down carefully.

  “Okay, go ahead.”

  For the next half hour Price and Lang went through their questions before gradually inviting Clark to offer his thoughts.

  “I don’t think Cal’s been happy in their marriage,” Clark said.

  “And what makes you think that?” Price asked.

  “He never stated it outright, but it was what he’d said in our private conversations.”

  “What do you mean?” Price asked.

  “Whenever Cal had the time, he’d walk over to my house and we’d watch a game and talk over a few beers.”

  “What would you talk about?” Lang asked.

  “Work, who pissed us off, politics—but mostly about the Cubs, the Bulls, the White Sox and the Blackhawks. But over the last ten months Cal started asking me if Sam and I were happy, if we’d ever had problems, if I ever felt like she was going to leave me, or if I felt like leaving her.”

  “Did he indicate that he and Faith were having problems?” Lang asked.

  “No, he said he was just curious. Then one night out of the blue, we’re watching a Cubs game and Cal had downed quite a few beers, more than usual, and he kind of loosened up, you know. He’s staring at the screen and he says that there were times that he’d wished that he could just start over with his life, that there were things he’d done that he regretted, that he wished that he could just disappear.”

  “Did he say what these regrettable things were?” Price asked.

  “No, and I asked him. But he refused to tell me. He said they were secrets he’d carry to his grave.”

  Price and Lang exchanged looks.

  “Did Cal give any reason for making such a statement?”

  “No, he was cryptic and at first I chalked it up to stress at his newspaper, the looming layoffs, all the beer he’d had and the fact the Cubs were losing. Then as it got later he tells me that if he ever wanted to, he could disappear and no one would ever find him—he’d go ‘off the grid.’ He said that he had a lot of police and criminal sources. He said there were things he could do to create a new identity, things he knew about credit cards, about counterfeit cash. He said he’d learned a lot from his years on the crime beat.”

  “Did he ever elaborate on why he’d disappear, or where he’d go?”

  Clark shook his head. “He just kind of let that go and he never said anything about it again.”

  “And what did you make of all this?” Price asked. “Was it just beer talk or something more?”

  “I always believed that Cal was exceptionally street smart because of his job. Now, when I think about it, yeah, it’s troubling, with Gage gone and Cal’s marriage talk. I don’t know what to think. You’ll keep this confidential, though, right? Because this could mean absolutely nothing.”

  “Confidential. We assure you,” Lang said.

  “Tell us.” Price moved on to a new subject. “Is the name Beth Gibson familiar to you?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Wait. Isn’t that the person who called Cal on Jack Thompson’s phone when everybody was at our house right after Gage’s disappearance?”

  “Yes. Do you know this person, or anything about her?”

  Clark shook his head.

  “Ever meet her?” Lang asked.

  “No.”

  “Let’s shift gears again,” Price said. “Are you involved with Gage and Ethan’s baseball team?”

  “I go to the games and help manage the team when I can.”

  “Do you recall about a month ago if the team’s equipment storage locker at the park near Emerson Boulevard was vandalized or damaged?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Do you recall anyone contacting Cal to buy a new lock and chain for the locker?”

  Clark shook his head. “Maybe Dean Huppkey or Jack Thompson might remember something like that. I don’t. Is it important to the case?”

  “Just something we’re following up on,” Price said.

  Clark looked at her for a moment, then at Lang before asking them, “What do you think happened to Gage?”

  “We don’t know. That’s what we’re trying to determine,” Lang said. “What do you think transpired, Mr. Clark?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, what do you think happened to Gage?”

  “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.” Clark stared beyond the detectives at the wall behind them, searching for an answer. “How does a nine-year-old boy disappear from what is essentially an enclosed space while with his parents? I’ve gone over it a thousand times in my head and I swear it just doesn’t make any sense.”

  40

  Cal Hudson’s heart sank.

  In the moments after Agent Malko had told them that the FBI’s lead on the woman who’d claimed to have Gage was a dead end, Cal was at a loss.

  The woman was unstable. The call was a fabrication. She had no connection to Gage.

  “Maybe you missed something! I’m going to drive to Archer Heights and search the property myself!” Cal had told Malko, grasping for hope as it evaporated.

  “You won’t be permitted to do that,” Malko had said. “Cal, listen to me. You and Faith have to be prepared for this emotional roller coaster. We’re going to see more of this sort of thing—false, exaggerated or distorted confessions, useless information from attention-seeking citizens and disturbed individuals. I’m sorry, but it’s all part of the case.”

  Beneath Malko’s halfhearted attempt at consolation Cal knew that the FBI had not cleared him or Faith.

  The Archer Heights setback had hurt. It became enmeshed with Cal’s other fears—the FBI’s suspicions toward them and his belief that, with the separation talk and now the divorce ad, Faith was keeping something crucial from him. The increasing mistrust fed the tension mounting between them and they withdrew into themselves to confront the real and growing horror.

  Gage could be dead.

  It was almost too great to bear, so much so that now, as Cal struggled with it, he welcomed the interruption of a phone call and answered.

  “Mr. Hudson, this is Agent Dee Lewin with the FBI. We need you t
o come to River Ridge police headquarters as soon as possible.”

  When Cal arrived, Agent Lewin and Agent Grant Hern told him they had been conducting an exhaustive review of the major news stories he had written over the past five years for the Chicago Star-News.

  “We’re looking for plausible, potential acts of retribution by the subjects in your stories,” Lewin said.

  The agents were set up at a desk on the same floor as the rooms where Cal and Faith had been interviewed and polygraphed. Seeing no sign of Malko, or Detectives Price and Lang, he inquired after them.

  “They’re out conducting interviews and following leads,” Lewin said, offering him a chair. The desk reflected the agents’ work, with a computer terminal, two laptops, a tablet and several notebooks. The plastic trash can next to it overflowed with takeout wrappers.

  Lewin got down to business. “We’ve done an analysis of all the stories you’ve written for the paper.”

  “That’s a lot of stories.”

  “Yes, and in the case of major stories we’ve also reviewed related reports by other news outlets, TV news and social media. We’ve conducted a threat assessment in the same vein as we do for law enforcement personnel who are threatened or deemed to be at risk.”

  “Cal, we’d like your input on our results.” Hern began clicking on pages cued up on the large monitor. “It’s evident you’ve dealt with a spectrum of dangerous people, murderers, rapists, pedophiles, organized crime figures, and while most of your stories are about Chicago-set crimes, you’ve traveled across the country and internationally to sketchy areas and have gone into prisons to interview death-row inmates and a range of convicted criminals.”

  “That’s true,” Cal said. “But in most cases I was never threatened.”

  “Most, but not all,” Lewin said. “Of all the hundreds of stories we reviewed, these are the ones that concern us most, so far. They’re in no order, but let’s start with this one. A murderer, a Chicago native, killed a retired couple in Berkeley, California. But after the California Supreme Court overturned his conviction he walked off death row.”

  “Lance Leonard Oakley.”

  “You covered his case extensively, interviewed him in prison before his release. One day Oakley called your newsroom, claimed you’d promised him a job and friendship,” Lewin said.