Last Seen

by Rick Mofina

  56

  Abel Renard Wixom.

  In the moments after interviewing Breeana Kohl, Rachel Price alerted her partner, Leon Lang, to join her. Minutes later their supervisor, Lieutenant Tony Sosa, and FBI Agent Malko were huddled around her desk looking at Wixom’s photograph and the investigation’s notes on him.

  “He was the ticket taker when Gage Hudson disappeared,” Lang said.

  “Yes, he was,” Price said as all investigators studied her tablet and the file notes on Wixom.

  “And we’ve already interviewed him?” Malko said.

  “Yes. At the outset of our investigation,” Price said.

  “Well, we’d better damned well find him and bring him in,” Malko said.

  “We’ve already alerted our patrol people at the fairgrounds.” Sosa was on his phone texting.

  “Look at this.” Malko pointed at Price’s screen. “Wixom is forty-two years old. Based in California, he’s listed as being an employee with Ultra-Fun for ten years in the position of technician. He’s familiar with all the workings of all the rides and attractions.”

  “Right,” Lang said, “and in his interview with River Ridge he said he never left his position as ticket taker during the time frame of Gage Hudson’s disappearance.”

  Sosa’s phone rang and he took a few steps away to take the call.

  “And look who backed up that alibi for him,” Malko said as Price scrolled through the notes. “Sidney Griner. Oh, this smells. Now we have a traumatized witness placing Wixom inside the Chambers at the time Hudson vanished. This gives him a window of opportunity.”

  The muscles in Malko’s jawline began throbbing. “What is Wixom’s history?”

  Price scrolled through the notes. “Nothing showing. His record looks clean.”

  Malko shook his head in disgust. “No way that’s right. My gut tells me something was missed here. We’ll run him through every database we have access to again. Who interviewed him for River Ridge?”

  Price scrolled through.

  “Detective Steb Kwhaley,” Price read from the screen, her eyes flicking to Lang, catching his subtle wince indicating another problem.

  “Bad news.” Sosa had finished his call. “Our patrol at the fairgrounds checked the site with Vaughn King. Turns out Wixom left the show immediately after his interview.”

  “He’s gone?” Malko said.

  “Wixom reported a family emergency and left in his RV.”

  “Is this before we had a chance to search it?” Malko said.

  Price examined the file. “Looks like Wixom’s RV wasn’t searched.”

  “Did he tell them where this emergency was? Or leave contact info?”

  “No.”

  Malko cursed, removed his glasses and unbuttoned his collar. “We’re going to put out an alert identifying Wixom as a person of interest. Meanwhile, let’s get Kwhaley in here.”

  * * *

  The instant River Ridge detective Steb Kwhaley joined the group, Malko assailed him with questions.

  “We want you to take a look at this file on Abel Wixom. Did you interview this midway employee?”

  Kwhaley was given to wearing ill-fitting shirts and jackets, making him look like a skeleton in his clothes. On some mornings colleagues, who detected traces of alcohol on his breath, doubted his ability to function. One detective, frustrated at working with Kwhaley, had called him a “waste of skin.”

  Now, concern widened Kwhaley’s eyes slightly as he slid on black-framed glasses and leaned in to read the information on the screen.

  “Yes, I interviewed the subject.”

  “And did you run a background check?” Malko asked.

  “I ran him through NCIC, but the system was temporarily down. I had a sense there was nothing. Wixom was very forthcoming.”

  “You had a sense, but no confirmation?”

  “The system was down.”

  “Did you submit a follow-up query?”

  “I may have.”

  “You may have?” Malko shook his head. “Your record shows his address is in California. Did you run him through state records?”

  “I put the request in, yes.”

  “And?”

  “They were slow to get back to me.”

  “That’s not an answer. Did you confirm his record or lack of one?”

  “Nothing came back, but I confirmed with a coworker that Wixom was not in the Chambers of Dread during the time Gage Hudson went missing, thereby eliminating him as a potential suspect.”

  “Who was that coworker?”

  “It’s in the file.”

  “Sidney Griner?”

  “Sounds correct, yes.”

  “Did you know that Griner is a potential suspect?”

  “No, I was not aware.”

  “Here’s another thing you’re not aware of, Detective. We just had a thirteen-year-old girl identify the subject you cleared, with no valid confirmation, as being inside the Chambers and molesting her and her friend during the time Gage Hudson was inside, and that he was moving in the direction of where the boy was last seen.”

  Kwhaley blinked several times. “Jeez. We need to bring him in, then.”

  “He’s gone, Detective. Shortly after telling you lies he drove off in his RV before we even had a chance to search it. Gage Hudson could be in that RV, and now no one knows where Wixom is.”

  Kwhaley’s eyes widened at the realization.

  Malko got in his face. “I’m going to request that you be removed from this case and reprimanded. If it was up to me, you’d be fired.”

  57

  Another day of life, Adria Zoliski sighed to herself as she headed out the rear door of her home to tend to her backyard garden.

  At eighty-six, Adria embraced each day as a gift and her garden was her joy. Working on it and making food for community functions kept her happy, healthy and independent.

  Surveying her immaculate yard, the sun bathed her in its warmth until she spotted something and frowned.

  Oh, that lazy old man!

  Adria shook her head. John, her eighty-seven-year-old husband, a retired contractor, had failed to repair the broken slats in the wooden privacy fence surrounding their yard after promising her he would do it.

  Yeah, sure, he says. I’ll fix it honey. I’ll take care of it. But he was down at the coffee shop flapping his jaw with his pals. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was watching sports or napping.

  How many times had Adria told him the animals were coming into the yard through the hole in the fence? The neighborhood cats, even rabbits from the ravine, and the other day she saw two sickly-looking stray dogs eating her vegetables and peeing on her flowers.

  Adria had a good mind to get John’s tools and fix it herself. She’d probably do a better job and it would be done quicker.

  Heaven, give me patience.

  But Adria chided herself. She knew there were more important things in this world. It may have been years since she’d retired from her job as an administrative assistant at the Cook County Sheriff’s Office of Professional Review—what some called internal affairs—but her mind was sharp and she stayed on top of all the news, especially crime stories, like the one about the little local boy who’d disappeared at the fair.

  Gage Hudson.

  It’s been all over the news and it hit close to home for Adria.

  She cast a look to the surrounding yards and rear alley that connected the backs of the houses in this section of River Ridge. That boy’s family lived less than half a block away. Adria could see their house in the distance through the trees. She didn’t know the Hudsons but she thought of them and their little boy.

  She couldn’t imagine their agony.

  She adjusted her sun hat and turned to her garden, which filled more than half of her
backyard. Adria’s family were farmers in the old country and the importance of growing your own food had been part of her upbringing, even in the middle of one of the largest metro areas in the country.

  Her vegetable garden thrived. She grew potatoes, beets, cabbage, beans, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, onions, lettuce, peas, tomatoes, turnips, garlic, leeks, eggplant, parsley and spinach.

  She also grew flowers. Breathing in their fragrance made her smile. Adria took pride in her gardening. She knew every inch of her backyard, which spot was doing well, which spot needed more tending.

  She sighed again and was about to bend down to pull out some withered cabbage leaves when she stopped.

  She’d caught a flash of color in the far corner.

  What was that?

  Something the animals dragged in or someone tossed in the yard.

  Adria stepped closer for a better look.

  Less than a minute later, after closer inspection and with her heart pounding, Adria called the police.

  58

  Clarksburg, West Virginia

  You Can Run but You Can’t Hide from Everything NC—I See!

  Sakura Sato smiled, as she did every day, at the colorful little banner that was her daughter’s art, pinned on the wall of her FBI workstation.

  Sato was an FBI specialist with NCIC, the National Crime Information Center, which was one of the world’s largest electronic storage houses of crime data, aiding every cop in the United States.

  She loved how the omnipotent technology encompassed everything from missing persons to stolen boats. A traffic cop who has stopped a car can search NCIC to determine if the driver is wanted, or if the car is stolen. On more complex priority cases, law enforcement agencies can request NCIC staff to help.

  That’s where Sato played a key role.

  She had security clearance to access an array of federal data banks and excelled at mining the vast web of information, or working with her colleagues to scour local, regional, national or international networks.

  When the system works, justice prevails.

  Sato glanced out her window at the rolling hills of West Virginia. Her section was part of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services and was housed in a sprawling three-story modular complex, some two hundred and fifty miles west of Washington, DC.

  Sipping coffee she resumed offline searches of purged records related to a money-laundering investigation in the southeast, when Ryan Lander, her supervisor, approached, typing a message on his phone.

  “Heads up, buddy. Need you to drop everything for a hot one—that missing child case out of Chicago. Something’s fallen through the cracks. I’m sending notes from the requestor now.”

  Sato opened Lander’s encrypted message and Abel Renard Wixom’s face blossomed on her computer monitor.

  “Got it. What d’you need?”

  “Full background check, records, fingerprints, any wants, warrants, associates. A full-court press, everything. And I mean everything.”

  “Not a problem.” Sato studied the notes. “It looks like a query on our guy was submitted earlier by an officer with River Ridge PD.”

  “Yup, our log shows a system maintenance glitch. The guy never followed up. In fact, he canceled it. Since then there’s been a break and the case agent, Tibor Malko—we’ve dealt with him before, not the most pleasant human on the planet—has blown a gasket. He’s resurrected the query and we’re making it a priority.”

  “I’m on it.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  Lander turned, taking a call on his phone, as Sato began running Wixom through the twenty-one files of NCIC’s massive database containing records from across the country.

  She went through wanted persons, then foreign fugitives, then identity theft records, then files of people on probation, parole or supervised release, or those released on their own recognizance.

  She moved on to records on criminal illegal aliens whom immigration had deported and those with warrants removal. From there she checked records of violent gang members, then suspected terrorists, then on to records of people in the sex offender registry.

  She looked at property files, then records on serially numbered, stolen, embezzled cash used for ransom or counterfeit securities. She checked files for stolen vehicles, vehicles involved in crimes and records on stolen license plates.

  Sato was getting hits, capturing and collecting pieces of information on Abel Renard Wixom.

  But she didn’t stop there.

  She went into the FBI Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, the mother of all databases. The system stored fingerprint impressions and criminal histories on nearly sixty million people. Then she worked in the data bank for the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, which was a repository for details on unsolved homicides and serial crimes.

  Following those sessions Sato continued her search.

  Abel Renard Wixom’s last known address was in California.

  After zipping off a message, she picked up her phone and followed up by calling a friend in Sacramento.

  “Robbie, it’s Sakura at NCIC. Did you get my message?”

  “Sure did, baby. Let me see what I can do—but it’s going to cost you some of that West Virginia blackberry jam.”

  “You got it.”

  Robbie Strickland, a senior analyst with California’s Department of Justice, moved on Sato’s request, submitting what they knew of Wixom into a number of state data banks. One of them was the California Law Enforcement Telecommunication System—CLETS—a network run by the justice department’s Dawkins Data Center.

  Strickland also accessed the various systems of California’s department of corrections, including the Parole Law Enforcement Automated Data System—LEADS—and the Automated Criminal History System. The submission could verify parolee history, offender identification, arrest records, convictions, holds and commitments for other law enforcement agencies, even create all-points bulletins and warrants.

  That’s when Abel Wixom’s history began lighting up all over the place.

  Strickland found that Wixom was convicted of felony child molestation in Reno, Nevada, in 1990. He also had a misdemeanor child molestation conviction in Hanford, California, in 1999. Two years later he faced new child molestation charges in Santa Ana. In that case he was alleged to have fondled a ten-year-old boy behind a small midway set up in a mall parking lot. Wixom’s lawyer managed to cast doubt on the allegations but not enough and Wixom had served time.

  Strickland let out a small whistle.

  A few years back he was released as a PC 290 sex offender.

  Strickland’s keyboard clicked from rapid typing. He let a few minutes pass, then called Sato back.

  “I’ve just sent you everything.”

  “I’m reading it now, thanks, Robbie.”

  “There’s more on him that you can’t see. It’s a file note in our system.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “Wixom’s file’s been flagged by an LAPD detective, Norm Howell. He’s to be alerted and contacted regarding any inquiries concerning Abel Wixom.”

  “Does it say why?”

  “No, but Howell must have more disturbing background on Wixom.”

  “Okay, we’ll alert our people in Chicago. Thanks for this, Robbie.”

  “And, Sakura?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t forget to send that jam.”

  59

  River Ridge, Illinois

  Back at home Cal was still feeling shaken by how Malko had grilled him on Kuwait, when loud thudding rattled the rear windows of the house.

  Cal and Faith hurried outside to their backyard.

  A police helicopter thudded overhead, hammering the sky.

  “What’s going on?” Faith asked him.

  T
hey’d hardly spoken in the last few hours while struggling with the wounds they’d inflicted on each other—the accusations, the acrimony and the fallout of the FBI suspecting each of them in Gage’s disappearance. Now the sudden alarming activity around them had diverted their attention.

  “Something serious,” he said, taking in the activity.

  About half a block from their home, a patrol car had sealed the rear alley. Its emergency lights bathed the neighboring houses, trees and fences in pulsating red and blue. Plastic yellow crime scene tape stretched around one yard.

  Investigators appeared to be canvassing door-to-door. K-9 units were scouring yards and shrubs along the alley while a drone skimmed the area at treetop level. Cal saw officers posted in the lane behind their backyard keeping curious neighbors in place. Then he spotted River Ridge officer Erik Ripkowski, one of the first to help them at the fairgrounds.

  “Erik!” Cal waved him to their yard. “What’s going on?”

  Ripkowski gave a tense glance to one of the other officers nearby. “I don’t know, Mr. Hudson.”

  “Did they find something related to Gage?”

  “Sir, all I know is that we’re asking people to stay on their property at this time.”

  “What? Why? Is Malko or Price around? I’m going down there.”

  Ripkowski held up his palms. “Sir, please, we’re asking you to remain on your property.” Ripkowski’s radio crackled. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.”

  Faith turned to Cal. “Oh God, this is bad. They’ve found something down there.”

  Cal’s face tensed and he punched a number into his phone.

  “Who’re you calling?”

  He didn’t answer. As the number rang he focused on the Clarks’ house. They lived four doors down, closer to the action.

  “Hello?”

  “Rory, Cal. What’s going on? It’s like a military operation out there and they won’t tell us anything.”

  “They won’t tell us much, either. A detective was just here asking us questions.”

  “What questions?”

  “Did we see anything suspicious recently, like anyone in the Zoliskis’ yard.”