by S. C. King
Sergeant Wood brought him a cup of coffee, and sat down in front of him. For a while, they drank their coffee in silence, and it was the detective who spoke first. “What do you think,” he asked the other man. “Was the child kidnapped for money, or was he taken for something else?”
“I don’t know,” the sergeant answered. “I have never dealt with such a mysterious case. During the years I spent studying at the police academy, they taught us that in most similar cases, the family would be contacted somewhere in the next 24 hours. We are well over that now. Then, I learned that there should be some lead or some witness to point us in the direction of the kidnappers, but here no one saw or heard anything.”
Detective Davis listened carefully to all the young man was saying. It helped him to listen to someone else’s theories to form his own.
“All my searches and inquiries have shown that the family has nothing to hide, and there is no obvious reason for them to lie to the police,” Wood continued, while looking at his notes. “According to their New York neighbors and friends, the family is a happy one, and the boy had no reasons to run away. His kindergarten teacher described Thomas as a happy and intelligent boy, who loved his family and was well cared for.”
“What about some business or financial problems?”
“We are still waiting for their bank statements, but as much as I can see, there is nothing there,” he answered his boss.
“So, complete mystery?” Davis asked, feeling the same exasperation the sergeant was talking about.
“We need to find something, and we need to find it now, if there is going to be even the smallest chance to find the boy.”
Just when the detective was going to agree once more with the younger policeman, the phone on the desk rang, and Wood went to answer it.
“Yes,” he said. “This is Sergeant Wood.”
The detective watched him taking notes and giving one word answers to whoever was on the other side of the phone. “Please, come to the station immediately,” he said, just before ending the conversation.
“Sir,” he turned towards the detective, looking very excited. “Someone has seen a white van parked a few streets from the Jones’ house. Mr. Smith says that this was the first time he saw it in town.”
“He is coming here, right?”
“Yes, sir, he will be here in a few minutes.”
After ten minutes, Mr. Smith entered the police station. He was an older gentleman, who wore glasses and walked with the help of a cane. Sergeant Wood knew him very well, as Mr. Smith was his high school teacher.
“Charlie,” he said the moment he entered the station, “I am so glad to see you, although the reason for this is not a happy one.”
“Mr. Smith,” the sergeant said. “This is detective Davis, he will be the one to take your statement.”
“Yesterday, just after dinner, I saw a white van parked in front of Mr. Roberts’ house,” he started in a businesslike manner. “They are out of town at the moment, but I thought nothing of it, as the van was one of those that help you transport things from one place to another.”
“Did you see someone getting out of it?” the detective asked.
“No, I thought nothing about it at the time; therefore, after I saw it when I got up to take a beer from the fridge, I saw nothing else,” the old man answered him.
“Can you remember what was written on the van?” Sergeant Wood asked the next question.
“Sorry, my eyes are not what they were. I saw that something was written on it, but what it was I cannot say.”
They continued to ask more questions, but Mr. Smith had nothing else to say about the case. He had heard about the missing boy in the morning, and only then thought of the van and that it might be connected to the case.
“We should see if there are any cameras on that street,” the detective said, once Mr. Smith left the police station. “We need to find the van’s registration number and proceed from there.”
Sergeant Wood took the car to the Mr. Smith’s street, and was relieved to find a security camera on the little souvenir shop, right across the street from the house in question. The lady who owned the shop was very pleasant, and immediately gave him the footage from the last few days.
Wood returned with it at the station, and quickly went through it. The van came into view three hours after the boy went missing, and two men in black got out of it. The quality of the footage was too bad for him to see their faces, but the logo on the van was clearly visible. LOGAN, it said in big black letters. After that, the sergeant quickly found out who owned the van.
Ian Logan was one of the best known criminals in Fairbanks, where he owned a lot of small businesses, which he used as a cover for his real business. The man was one of the many criminals living in Fairbanks and known by the local police enforcement. Davis had never seen the man in person, but he had heard a lot about him from other detectives.
Up until now, no one had been able to bring him to court, but he had come closer a lot of times. But however bad a person Ian Logan was, his criminal activities were mostly connected to smuggling, drugs, and illegal business investments, nothing like kidnapping little children.
Chapter 5
The security tape showed no other activity in the house, and after watching it a few more times, both the detective and the sergeant decided to go and personally see the house. They took the car, although the house was very close to the police station. During the few minutes it took them to reach it, Sergeant Wood explained the town’s history to the detective. He believed that for him to interact with the locals, the detective needed to know a bit more about the people he was dealing with.
The house was a two story building, painted in white and decorated with bright red bricks. There was a small garden in front of it, and another bigger one in the back. Davis and Wood first looked around the house, searching for any clues that the boy was still on the premises. The owners of the house had returned from their vacation, and the policemen were able to enter the house without further difficulties.
“Hello,” Davis said to the middle aged woman who opened the door. “I am Detective Davis, and this is Sergeant Wood.”
“How can I help you?” she asked.
“Two days ago, late in the evening, a white van was seen in front of your house,” the sergeant explained. “That same day, a few hours earlier, a boy went missing from a house a few streets away from yours. We think that the van has something to do with the boy’s disappearance.”
“There was no one here two days ago,” the woman answered him. “My husband and I, we just returned this morning.”
“Yes, we are aware of the fact,” Wood continued. “But, is it possible for someone to have used your house during your absence?”
“Only my husband’s sister has a key to the house, but she is living on the other side of the town, and comes here only a few times a week. And anyway, I saw nothing out of place when we returned this morning.”
“Would you mind, if we take a look inside?” Detective Davis asked. “We examined the security tapes from the street and saw two men enter the house. The van was parked right in front of it, and the entrance of the house was not visible, but there might be something that points to what they did inside.”
“Oh my God,” the lady exclaimed. “Someone used my house for criminal activities! Please, come inside.”
The two officers looked carefully around the house, especially examining the cellar. That was where they found a small pool of blood near the window. Mrs. Williams, the owner of the house, knew nothing about it and then after looking around, she found a jacket that also was not theirs.
“I suspected nothing, so I did not look around when we returned home,” she explained to the police. “This is the first time something like this happened to us.”
“We are going to ask you not to touch anything and to look around the house for anything else that is out of place. Our forensic team would come to take samples of the blood and photo
s of the scene.”
“Okay, my husband and I, we will do anything we can to help,” Mrs. Williams said, and ran up the stairs to call her husband.
“This is not a good sign,” Detective Davis said. “If the blood turns out to be the boy’s, that might mean that Thomas is hurt or even worse.”
“Are we going to tell the parents?” the sergeant asked.
“We need samples of their blood, so that we can run the DNA test. Maybe it would be best, if you go and speak to them right now. I don’t want the news to reach them from some other source.”
The forensic team came to the house and carefully examined all the rooms and the cellar. The blood, according to the medical examiner, wasn’t too much, and even a child would not be facing death from losing so little. The jacket, on the other hand, was a brown, light man’s jacket, which was almost new. In its pockets, the policemen found a receipt and a box of matches. The receipt was from a pharmacy in Fairbanks, while the box was from some kind of club, probably in the same city.
Mr. and Mrs. Harrison were both relieved and scared after hearing that the police had found something. The mentioning of the blood caused a lot of commotion in the house, and both parents gave samples of their blood to the medical examiner. The preliminary results showed that the blood was from someone related to both parents.
“This changes everything,” Detective Davis muttered once the results were emailed to him. “The boy is obviously hurt, and the men who took him are professionals.”
“What?” the sergeant asked.
“I said that it explains why we were unable to find any leads so far. The boy was either taken by professional kidnappers, or there is some other mystery we still know nothing about.”
“I also thought that it was strange that no one saw anything,” the young man agreed. “But, professionals... isn’t that a bit too much?”
“Ian Logan?! We need to find out how he is connected to all this.”
Chapter 6
Six years earlier...
Since Lora was staying at home and Jake wasn’t, they had decided it would be easier for Lora to do the majority of the cooking. They split the rest of the chores, and Jake ended up with the ones involving the heavy-duty cleaning. Ostensibly, it was because of the baby, but Jake had his doubts. After only eleven months of marriage there were still things they were learning about each other.
So Lora usually cooked, and was actually quite good at it. Thanks to the doctor’s nutritional advice, the meals were healthier than the typical macaroni and cheese. On the weekends, they cooked together and that was fun. Jake was a recipe-follower, where Lora was more intuitive, adding a dash of this and that on a whim.
Once a week, though, Jake brought dinner home with him as a way to give Lora a break. The ribs he had picked up were probably not as healthy a choice as his mother would have liked her daughter-in-law to have, but the way Jake figured, everyone needed a break once in a while.
“Hey, Lora, are you hungry?” Jake grinned as he called out the question. Hungry was almost a given all the time where Lora was concerned. Jake couldn’t tease her about it too much, though. Jake heard a faint noise from the living room, but no other response to his entrance. Dumping the take-out bags on the kitchen table, he made his way to the other room. What he saw, however was something unexpected.
“Lora?”
His wife was sitting on the couch, with her feet pulled up and her arms wrapped around her knees. This was a far cry from her normal, sprawling posture, but what was really upsetting was the fact that she was crying. Not just crying, but sobbing as though his world was ending.
Jake was across the room before he was even aware of moving. “Lora? Tell me what’s wrong. Are you okay? Is it the baby?” Each question got him a shake of the head, but Lora was still weeping too hard to speak. “Has something happened to your dad?”
Lora pointed at the television, and started crying harder.
Perplexed and worried in equal measure, Jake turned to look at the screen. Credits were rolling by, making it obvious that a movie or television show had just finished.
“Lora,” Jake knelt next to his wife and took Lora’s face into his hands. “Calm down, and tell me what’s wrong.”
Lora responded to the soothing tone of Jake’s voice. She took deep breath, which slowed her sobs a little. “It’s . . . it’s so sad.”
“What’s sad, Lora?” Jake asked gently. He ran his thumb over Lora’s quivering lower lip. “Tell me.”
“Th-the movie,” Lora stammered through his tears.
Jake frowned, trying to make sense of his brother’s babbling. “Lora, are you talking about some movie you watched?”
“Y-yes,” Lora confirmed, sniffing hard.
“Lora, it’s just a movie,” Jake tried to settle down the pregnant woman. “You shouldn’t get yourself so worked up over it.”
“I kn-know that, Jake,” Lora answered him. “I’m not dumb. I just can’t, can’t help it.”
That admission cleared things up a bit for Jake. Hormones. The doctor had pulled Jake aside during the last exam, and explained that Lora might have mood swings as her body tried to compensate for carrying a child. When Jake had asked what to do, he’d just shrugged and told him to support Lora any way he could.
“I know you’re not dumb,” Jake told her softly. “This isn’t you, Lora, it’s the hormones. They’re making you a little more emotional than you’d be normally.”
Lora sniffed again. “You think so?”
“Oh, yes,” Jake said with feeling. “I know so.” He got up from his knees, and sat next to Lora on the couch and kissed her gently.
“Lucky me,” Lora retorted, and then yawned widely.
“Come on,” Jake got up and held out his hands to his wife. “Let’s take a nap before dinner.”
As Jake walked to the bedroom, he couldn’t help but think of the situation. He wanted this baby with all of his heart, they both did, but Jake had to admit that he wished it weren’t so hard on Lora. The physical changes were bad enough, but if there were too many more hormone storms, Jake worried about Lora’s mental health. Lora kept her emotions close, weeping uncontrollably would be deeply embarrassing to her.
“Come on, lie down with me,” Jake cajoled when they got into the room. He put action to words, and spread himself out on the mattress, reaching for Lora beseechingly.
Lora groaned, but managed to get down on the bed. Jake settled them so that Lora’s back was to his chest. Jake snaked an arm down between then and slowly rubbed circles on Lora’s back.
“Mmmm . . .” Lora purred. “Feels nice.”
“Good,” Jake responded firmly.
Jake remembered those moments as the first time he realized that he was becoming a father. Tommy’s arrival had been the best thing that ever happened in his life. He loved his wife, but there was nothing in the world he loved more than his son.
And now Tommy was missing...
His life as Jake knew it ended the moment his son disappeared. He wanted to be there for his wife, but it was hard, when all he wanted was to go out and search for his boy. Lora could see the way her husband was pulling away from her, and that only augmented her pain.
The mysterious disappearance of their son was slowly tearing their family apart.
Chapter 7
The white van took the investigation into Fairbanks. Ian Logan was a known criminal who dealt in stolen goods, drugs, and other similar business. Davis had no idea how Thomas Harrison and Logan were connected, but he hoped that the truth would come out quickly.
Detective Davis left Sergeant Wood behind to take care of the family of the missing boy and search for other leads in Stronghill. Wood wasn’t happy about the arrangements, as he told the detective. He wanted to go with him and be present during the interrogations and the rest of the investigation.
“Don’t you worry,” Davis smiled at his enthusiasm and disappointment. “You might be much more successful at finding something useful h
ere, than me finding anything in Fairbanks.”
The detective drove to the big city that same night, planning to spend it with his family. His wife and daughter were happy to see him home, but their happiness only intensified his worry about Thomas. Davis could not remember the last time he worried this much about a case, but the little boy had brought out all the paternal instincts in him.
The case was still a complete mystery, and the more he was thinking about it, more confused he was getting. Why did they take the boy? It made no sense at all – the family was not rich or powerful, they had no known enemies, and any other reason for taking the boy was too horrifying to even consider it. Human trafficking had been always there, in the back of his mind, but it also did not make sense. The boy had a family who cared about him, and the human traffickers usually targeted the emigrants and poorest among the population.
The second mysterious point was the empty house and the blood. Why, after they took the boy, was it necessary to hide him in an empty house so close to the scene of the crime? If everything was organized beforehand, it would have been much more logical to drive away immediately. Why did they risk being seen or even caught, by hiding in a house?
And finally, there was Ian Logan’s involvement. How did this well known, big city criminal get involved with the case of a missing child? No matter how hard Davis thought about it, he could not come up with a logical explanation. His direct boss had called him earlier in the evening, asking for progress or at least some promising lead. Detective Davis had nothing to give him. Logan was a good bet, but they all knew that getting something out of him would take time and proper motivation.
The next morning, the third after the disappearance of Thomas Harrison, Davis entered the big glass building where Ian Logan had his new offices. The security let him pass once he showed his badge, and he made a point of looking back to see how the older security guard called the bosses upstairs.
