“Kyle, I appreciate that, I really do, and I’m not shy about asking for things. Just ask Cal.”
“He’s not,” Cal nodded in agreement.
“But I won’t waste them either, even in this case,” Braddock added. “But we are working hard. We’re doing everything we can.”
“Good, then we all understand each other,” Kyle Mannion replied, satisfied, handing Braddock his business card. “My cell is on the back. You can call me at any time, no matter the hour and I’ll get you whatever you need, just ask.” Kyle Mannion shook Braddock’s hand, “Thank you for all you’re doing. We all appreciate it.” Mannion looked back to the rest of the room. “Come on, gentlemen. We’ve taken the sheriff and detective away from their work for long enough. Let’s go see if Jeff simmered Skippy down.”
After everyone left, Braddock looked over to Cal. “How many phone calls have you been getting from these guys?”
Cal waved it off. “Plenty, but that’s my job to handle that. I’ve noticed you holed up in your office all day. What gives?”
“I’ve got something going but I want to keep it quiet. I can tell you about it now, but then you wouldn’t have honest deniability.”
“Honest deniability?”
“Yeah, if something came up that made some folks around here—for example, the ones who just left—uncomfortable.”
“What are you up to?” Cal asked warily.
“Collecting a lot of information and putting it in a database that I can search if and when I come up with some evidence.”
“And a lot of people might be upset if they found themselves in this database or that you felt the need to create one?”
“Maybe,” Braddock answered. “Now if you give me another day or two, then I can let you know if I have anything worth discussing.”
“Okay,” Cal replied, nodding. “Do what you got to do.”
Braddock went to the door to leave.
“Do you want a word of advice?”
Braddock turned around with a wry smile. “Kyle Mannion.”
Cal nodded. “Skip Sauer is a banker. He wets his pants every time the market takes a shit, so don’t worry about him. As for the others…well, Mayor Miller is important, Warner has some juice, the county attorney is important, I’m important, but the real power around here is Kyle Mannion. Keep him an ally.”
.
CHAPTER 15
“ARE YOU UP FOR SOME WILD YET EDUCATED SPECULATION?”
Braddock grabbed the suitcase and carried it out the back door to the Suburban belonging to Quinn’s grandparents, Roger and Mary Hayes. Quinn had already loaded his backpack into the backseat, where he would ride along with two of his other cousins on the ten-hour drive to Michigan. In the backseat there would be movies and much gaming that would take place on the drive to northern Michigan and Crystal Lake.
Quinn was excited for the trip, as he’d been the last two summers when he’d left with his two best buddies and their grandparents. Yet it was always hard for dad to say goodbye for three weeks.
“Behave yourself.”
“I will, Dad.”
“And of course, have fun, right?”
“For sure.”
“And don’t be afraid to send me a text or two with that new cell phone of yours. Pictures, too.”
“I will,” Quinn replied, holding up the new phone. “I promise, Dad.”
“Alright,” Braddock replied, tousling his son’s mop of light brown hair, “I love you, buddy.”
“I love you too, Dad,” his son replied sincerely, hugging his father hard, holding the embrace for an extra second or two before climbing up into the backseat and buckling himself in. After a brief word with Roger and Mary, the Suburban roared to life. He watched as they pulled out of the driveway and roared down the road, finally disappearing from view. He would have loved nothing more than to have climbed into that Suburban and gone to Michigan with them.
It was a breezy morning, creating a wavy chop on the lake. Given the conditions, he eschewed his typical morning swim. Instead he showered quickly and was in the office just before seven a.m. Turning on his computer, he settled in to begin working. However, before he could get too engrossed, there was a light knock on his office door. Sheila was standing with Gail Anderson in the doorway.
Braddock greeted her, closed his door and then guided her to one of the guest chairs in front of his desk. He took the guest chair opposite her, turning it to face her. Sheila brought in a cup of coffee for his guest. “Thank you,” the mother replied meekly before taking a careful sip from the Styrofoam coffee cup.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Detective Braddock.”
“It’s not a bother, not at all,” he answered, leaning forward in the chair with his elbows on his thighs and hands lightly clasped together.
“I know you’re busy and all,” she started, her eyes already lightly moistened.
He could tell that she wasn’t sleeping well, and it looked as if she’d aged years in a matter of days. The wrinkles in her forehead had multiplied and dark puffy bags had developed under her eyes. She now looked frail and her clothes looked exceedingly baggy hanging on her withering body. He wondered if she’d been eating.
“Is there anything new?”
Braddock looked down for a moment before slowly shaking his head. “We are still investigating, still looking, but I don’t have anything new for you. I’m sorry.”
“Is Tori still helping? I didn’t see her around here.”
“Agent Hunter has been ordered by the FBI to investigate another case down in Des Moines.”
“Is she coming back?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Braddock answered. “She wants to but there is no way of knowing how long the case she’s assigned to could take.”
“I see,” Gail answered and then reached for a tissue from the box on Braddock’s desk and wiped her nose while sniffling. “Do I give up?”
“You never give up until there is—certainty,” Braddock replied softly, looking to the floor before looking directly up into Gail Anderson’s eyes. “But I also think we need to be realistic.”
“No false hope, right?”
“Right,” Braddock replied. “But I’m not giving up, not until I get some answers. I promise you that.”
Gail Anderson stayed for another fifteen minutes before leaving. He watched as she slowly shuffled out of his office and down the narrow hall. He sat back down in his desk chair, leaned back and closed his eyes. “Shit,” he muttered angrily before sitting up and looking to his computer and the results of his search for similar cases.
In his search he’d focused on missing women ages seventeen to twenty-seven where the disappearance involved an abandoned car. So far, through his research and working the phones, he thought he found three that had some commonalities to the disappearances of Jessie Hunter and Genevieve Lash.
The first case was from 2004. Carrie Blaine, age twenty-four, with long blonde hair and blue eyes, disappeared after having left work as a waitress at the Grey Wolfe Bar in Bismarck, North Dakota. Her car was found in the parking lot behind the bar, the keys on the ground underneath. She was never seen again.
The second case was from 2009. Ginger Zeller’s car was found abandoned in an alley behind her apartment building in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Age twenty-two, she was a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and had last been seen leaving a party at 2:30 in the morning.
The third case he came across was from 2011 in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Leanne Benson, a twenty-six-year-old graduate student seeking a master’s degree in biology, was last seen leaving a night class from Northern Iowa University and walking toward the Panther parking lot, an overflow lot on the southeast edge of campus. In the morning her car was still in the parking lot, found with the driver’s side door open and a small streak of fresh blood on the side of the driver’s seat. It was theorized that she was attacked with her car door open. While it was a university parking lot, there were no surveillance cameras i
n operation in that lot at that time.
In all three instances the women disappeared and were never heard from again. Their bodies were not found. All three women did have cell phones, but the phones were not found nor were they able to be traced. There were no witnesses of any kind. The women were all presumed dead and had been declared as such. In all three instances, the killer was uncanny in his ability to seemingly attack, subdue and get away without anyone seeing anything. “It’s like you get right up close and personal, their guard is down and then, wham,” he muttered quietly.
“Will?” Sheila asked as she stuck her head in his office, “I have a call on line two that I think you need to take. It’s from a detective in Brookings, South Dakota.”
“Okay,” he replied and picked up the phone. “Will Braddock.”
“Detective Braddock, I’m Jeff Bruening. I’m a detective in Brookings, South Dakota. I’m calling because I have a case that I’ve been investigating the last two days and there might be some similarities to your Genevieve Lash case. I was wondering if you had some time to talk a little shop.”
Tori tried sleeping in an easy chair in the office of the Taylor’s home. You’d think with how many times she’d done this in various houses, buildings and offices over the years while working a kidnapping, she would have trained her mind and body to be able to sleep anywhere and on anything, no matter its size or level of comfort. Yet every time it was a struggle. And now, while loathe to admit it, especially with a two-year-old child kidnapped, her mind was elsewhere.
No matter the lengths she went to bury it, the memory of her sister, of her disappearance was always there, lurking in the back of her mind. The memory of Jessie was ready to be triggered by the littlest thing from 1999, like if she heard “Scar Tissue” or “Californication” by Red Hot Chili Peppers, or if she stumbled across a “Friends” episode, something she and Jessie always watched, or if the movie American Pie was on, the last movie they went to together three weeks before she disappeared. Most people would laugh loudly anytime someone impersonated Alyson Hannigan’s perky Michelle saying, “This one time, at band camp…” If Tori heard it, she immediately thought of Jessie. She and Jessie laughed again and again at that line, saying it to each other repeatedly in the weeks before she’d been abducted. It was the little moments and memories like that which, in a flash, brought her sister’s case out of the dark corners of her mind.
That memory was no longer the lurking, occasionally painful distraction that would appear and then fade. Now it was all-consuming. She had the taste of reopening her sister’s case, of Manchester, of walking the stretch of highway where she was abducted, cruising the streets of their old hometown knowing, knowing that somewhere nearby the killer was lurking, maybe even watching, and even possibly hunting her. More than anything, that was why she was wide awake in the pitch black of the night.
Instinctually she reached for her phone and checked her text and email messages. There was an email from Tracy Sheets from late last night indicating she was working on the project and thought she’d have something to share later tomorrow, which was now today. Later in the day— how much later? How long would she have to wait? And if Tracy had something, what did she have? And even if Tracy did have something, Tori wondered what she could then turn around and do with it.
She’d considered calling Braddock, but then thought the better of it. They were on good terms now and she didn’t want to do anything to distract or, knowing herself, annoy him until she heard from Tracy. Besides, she had no idea when she’d be able to get back to Manchester.
Trying to sleep in the chair was worthless. As if her own insomnia wasn’t enough, it was a cloudless night with a full moon, the light for which filtered in through the six tall exterior lightly curtained windows of the office. Turning on a light was not required for her to inspect the many pictures on the multiple shelves of the long built-in bookcase. There were family pictures, several of the Taylors with Ava over her two years. A high shelf contained a set of photos of Jake Taylor with what appeared to be college friends and another lower shelf was pictures of Erica Taylor and what looked to be several of her friends. A shelf in the middle of the bookcase contained pictures, perhaps ten years old, of Jake Taylor, another woman Tori presumed to be his sister Cindy and their parents. There were also several pictures of Jake and just Cindy.
She quietly made her way down the wide corridor dividing the main level of the house. To the left she glanced into the living room to see Mr. Taylor, his back turned, sleeping on the couch. In the kitchen she could see a red light illuminated for the coffee maker. There was a half pot of warm coffee left. If she was going to be awake, she might as well do it with coffee. She took a ceramic coffee cup out of the sink’s drying rack and poured herself a half cup.
Blowing to cool the coffee, she stepped to her right to look out the side window of the kitchen into the neighbor’s backyard. As she raised the cup to her mouth, she caught a flash of light to the right and then looked up to the second floor of the neighbor’s house.
In a narrow window she saw a man who she recognized as the neighbor. She’d seen him out in the driveway putting the garbage out earlier. He was holding his cell phone and appeared to be typing a message. After a moment, he looked up and to the Taylor’s house, waving the phone. Tori leaned forward, out over the sink, trying to peer out the kitchen window to look up to her right but she had no angle to see up to the second floor. She was aware of only one person being up there.
Tori set her cup softly on the counter and walked back to the front of the house, quietly opened the front door, slipped out onto the front stoop and then pulled it gently closed. She turned to her right, stepped around and then over some bushes and flowers that were landscaped along the sidewalk and front step, and then made her way around the south side of the house and into the backyard. Situated on and jutting out from the northwest corner of the house was a large and expansive deck. Crouching down low, using the spindled deck railing as cover, she picked her way along to the corner of the deck and then peered around it and up to the second floor of the Taylor house. As she expected, she saw Erica Taylor in the window with her phone, looking over to her neighbor.
Tori watched the two of them for five minutes, texting and waving to each other before Erica stepped back from the window. Staying crouched low, Tori made her way back around to the south side of the house, stopped and placed a call to Newsom, who groggily answered on the third ring.
“Agent Hunter…uh, what’s up?” Newsom greeted drowsily.
“Pick me up in ten minutes two houses to the south of the Taylor’s house.”
“Can I ask why?”
“I’ll explain when you get here but bring along your investigative file. I think I might have us a lead.”
“At this time of night?”
“Best time to find them.”
Newsom arrived fifteen minutes later and drove the two of them to the parking lot for a Kum & Go convenience store a few blocks away. They quickly went inside to get coffees and then convened in the parking lot.
“What’s up?” Newsom asked, taking a sip of his coffee.
“I’m pretty sure there is something going on between Erica Taylor and her neighbor to the north.”
“Ooookay,” Newsom answered hesitantly after a moment, surprised. “And what makes you think this?”
Tori described what she saw. “So, what do we know about the neighbor?”
Newsom opened a file folder. “His name is David Hutchinson. He’s lived next door for five months.”
“Own or rent?”
“Rent with an option to buy. He’s been out of work. The company he worked for was purchased and he got a sizable severance package so he’s enjoying the summer at home he said, before starting up his job search in the fall.”
Tori snorted a smile. “Are you up for some wild yet educated speculation?”
“Isn’t that why an FBI special agent ends up in the Kum & Go parking lot at four forty-f
ive a.m.?”
“Here’s what might have happened to Ava. Erica Taylor puts Ava down for her nap in the family room. Interestingly, she didn’t put her up in her crib in her bedroom upstairs, but instead downstairs in the family room. Once Ava is down and sleeping, a few minutes later, David Hutchinson slyly makes his way over and those two go upstairs for an activity nap.”
“Activity nap, that’s a new one. Back in the day, my wife and I always called that an afternoon delight.”
“Like that song, what was the name of that group?”
“Starland Vocal Band, their one and only hit.” Newsom answered drolly. He was tracking with Tori. “So, while those two are upstairs doing their thing someone swoops into the house and scoops up Ava.”
“And does it quietly and without Ava putting up a fuss or making any noise, at least according to Ms. Taylor.”
“Well, if you’re right, she’s upstairs in the height of passion, she might not have heard anything anyway, not that she’ll be willing to admit that was what was going on if it was. Like you said, wild speculation.”
“Based on what I just saw, it’s not that wild. Those two looked like lovers longing for one another.”
The two of them took drinks from their gas station coffees as the sun started peeking over the flat eastern horizon of Iowa.
“So, let’s just say the kidnapper knew those two were having an affair, where does that get us?” Newsom asked.
“Probably nowhere, unless—” Tori’s eyes brightened. “Jake Taylor knows his wife is having an affair?”
“Again, if they are.”
“Let’s just assume, at least for the moment that they are, with the added twist that Jake Taylor knows it,” Tori added. “Does it make him angry?”
Silenced Girls Page 17
