by S. C. King
Jake helped her to get out of her chair, and walked beside her down the stairs. He saw how she avoided looking at their son’s room, and felt horrible for leaving her alone. “I am sorry, I left you alone, Lora,” he said to her when they sat at the kitchen table.
“I only want my baby back,” she muttered with tears in her eyes.
“I know...” Jake said, and could not say more.
His mother had prepared sandwiches for them all, as well as some coffee. They ate in silence, each lost in their own thoughts, which they were unable to express.
Lora had yet to accept the fact that she might never see her son again. She spent her days and nights waiting for him to call her and run into her arms. The last few days had been a hell for her, but she refused to take any meds to calm her down and help her sleep. If there was even the smallest chance for her boy to come home, she wanted to be there to meet him.
“Sergeant Wood is coming here,” Richard entered the kitchen and told them. “He says that he needs to speak to all of us.”
Jake and Lora stood up quickly and followed Richard into the living room, where his wife was already sitting on the sofa. Sergeant Wood arrived after a few minutes, and sat on the chair that Richard offered him.
“We have some news about Thomas,” he started in a serious voice. “One of the men we arrested yesterday started talking, and said that when he last saw the boy, he was still alive and well.”
Everybody in the room let go of the breath they were holding. Lora started crying, feeling a new hope fill her heart. The sergeant told them that they still knew nothing about the boy’s whereabouts, but at least they had found out that a day later he was still alive.
That night, Jake and Lora went to bed together, and she was finally able to get some much needed sleep. Jake, however, stayed awake deep into the night, thinking about his little boy and praying to God to get him back home. Visions of Tommy all alone and scared filled his mind, leaving him more worried than ever.
Chapter 11
A few hours earlier...
John Stone was the one to talk, after the police officers brought up a few of his past criminal activities and promised him better treatment.
Once he agreed to talk, Davis took the place of the interrogating officer and started asking the questions.
“Tell us everything you know about the disappearance of Thomas Harrison,” he asked right away.
“All I know is that four days ago I was paid to dispose of a body,” Stone started. “Mr. Logan called me late in the afternoon, and gave me the address in Stronghill. I was supposed to take one of the company’s vans and go to the town, take the body, and dispose of it.”
“Tell me everything that happened after that,” Davis insisted.
“I went to the garage, and Logan was waiting there for me. He gave me the keys and the last instructions. I drove to the house, the one with red brick ornaments, it was opened, and no one was waiting for me inside. I found the boy in the basement, as Logan told me. At first, I thought that he was dead, but after a while he moved, and I was surprised to find out that he was alive.”
The detective looked ready to ask some more questions, but he obviously decided otherwise, because he let Stone continue with his story.
“I had no idea what to do then, and called Logan to ask him. He was stunned as well and after ending the call, called me back in ten minutes. He had new instructions for me – I was to take the boy, clean the house, and bring him to a secluded place near Fairbanks.” he explained. “I did as I was instructed – cleaned the house from any trace of the boy, and then brought the boy to the back of the van. Before that, however, I put a bandage over a cut the boy had on his leg.”
“You have to show us the place where you left him,” the detective added.
“Okay, but I cannot tell you anything about the man who took the boy from me. He was wearing a mask and there was no car nearby. He took him from me, and ordered me with his head to go. So, I did just that – I got back into the van, and drove to the nearest car wash.”
“Who was with you at the house?”
“No one,” Stone said, looking down.
“We have footage that shows two men walking into the house and getting out of it. Also, the cameras of the carwash show you and a younger man bring the car in and getting it out.”
John Stone looked uncomfortable with these questions, but when the detective did not move on and stayed there, waiting for an answer, he finally had to say something.
“That was my little cousin with me,” he muttered. “But he has nothing to do with this. I took him to help me with the cleaning. He never saw Mr. Logan or learned the name of the boy.”
“Okay, we will see about that later,” Davis let it go for now. “Tell me about the man, who left the boy in the house for you to find.”
“I never saw him,” he answered relieved. “All Logan said was that there had been an unfortunate accident with one of his friends, and he needed someone to dispose of the body. If you ask me, the boy was hurt in a car accident.”
“What kind of injuries did he have?”
“As I said, he had a tear in his leg, and there was a small bump on his forehead. That was all I could see.”
“Was the boy disoriented?”
“Yes, he was. After he regained consciousness, he almost immediately fell asleep,” Stone explained.
“Is there something else you remember about what happened?”
“Logan was very worried about the whole thing to remain between us,” Stone said, after thinking a little. “He paid me double what we had agreed, so that I would stay silent even if the police came to ask questions.”
“Okay, now you are going to point out the right place where you last saw the boy and will describe everything once more. We want to be sure that there is nothing that you forget or omit to tell us.”
Stone asked about his deal and the police officer, who sat down to continue his interrogation, promised him to see about it later.
Davis, on the other hand, went straight to the room, where Ian Logan was sitting together with his lawyer.
“Mr. Logan,” he started, before even sitting down. “We have a witness who says that you paid him to dispose of the body of Thomas Harrison. What do you have to say about it?”
Logan lost a lot of his confidence and started looking at his lawyer for help. “That is not true,” he said, unsure of how to proceed.
“We know that it is, Mr. Logan, so there is no need for you to deny it. Anyway, things will go much easier for you, if we find the boy alive and well.”
Logan, however, refused to answer any other questions, and the policemen had to work with what John Stone gave them.
Chapter 12
A police car was sent in the place which Stone described. Davis knew that they would probably find nothing there, but that was the last place where the boy had been seen alive, so they had to look at it.
They called him after two hours to report that the place Stone indicated was easy to find. There were still traces left of his car. Fortunately, they found a second pair of prints, left by a second car on a nearby road, hidden behind the trees. From what they found, the policemen were able to determine that the second vehicle was an SUV, and nothing else.
Davis thanked them, and asked for one more favor – they needed to drive around the woods and see if there was any property nearby. If they were lucky enough, they might even find a witness to the transfer of the child from one vehicle to the other.
Content with what they had found so far, Davis left the witnesses to be handled by two other detectives, and drove back to Stronghill. Wood had called him a few hours earlier, saying that he would be doing a second search of the garden and the streets around it. If Thomas was the victim of a car accident, he must have gotten outside the garden and into the street.
Davis arrived at the house, where the tragedy happened to find Sergeant Wood carefully examining the garden fences. He was walking on his hands and legs, and looking ve
ry concentrated.
“I found it,” he exclaimed to no one in particular.
“What did you find?” Davis asked nevertheless.
“Oh, hello sir,” the sergeant greeted him seriously. “I found a small hole in the fence. As you can see, it is big enough for a small child to go through it, and it also would bring the boy right into the street.”
“Good job, sergeant,” the detective congratulated him, and walked towards the gate to exit the garden and look at the street outside it.
The hole in the garden fence was well hidden by the bushes that were planted all along it. The detective, however, knew where to look for it, and was able to easily find it. It has been just where the road was making a small turn, making it difficult for drivers to see clearly ahead.
“If the boy exited the garden here,” Davis pointed the hole. “It would have been difficult for a driver to see the boy in time to stop.”
“Difficult, but not impossible,” the sergeant added. “The car must have been moving very fast in order for the driver not to see the child.”
“So,” the detective continued. “The car comes from there and hits the boy right here. Then the driver gets out of it, takes the boy inside the car and drives him to the empty house a few streets from here. We do not see him on the tapes, because he is a local man, who knows how to pass from behind the house, where there are no cameras. Then he called Logan and asked him to come and get the boy’s body...”
“What a story?!” the sergeant exclaimed. “If I do not know that it was true, I would think that you are reading me a crime mystery novel.”
“Right,” Davis smiled unwillingly. “Stone was hired by Logan to do the job, and he found that the boy was still alive. Logan must have consulted with the man, who caused the accident and he changed his orders to Stone. Now that boy was given to another associate of Logan’s, and we know that he was still alive.”
While Davis was talking, Wood looked around in the grass that covered the side of the road. The detective saw him bend down and take something in his hand. It was a watch, a golden watch, which had its snap broken.
“We should ask the family if the watch belongs to any one of them,” Davis said, and both men walked back inside the garden.
Lora and Jake were sitting inside the house, while Richard and his wife were waiting for the policemen on the veranda.
“Mr. Jones,” the sergeant asked him. “Could you tell me if this watch belongs to anyone in your family?”
Richard took the watch and examined it carefully. “No,” he said, after a while. “The watch is not ours, but I think I can tell you to whom it belongs. If I am not mistaken, this is Robert’s watch, Robert Brown our neighbor.”
Davis remembered the man from the day when he and Sergeant Wood were collecting statements. He recalled Mrs. Brown’s kind smile, and her husband’s cold and reserved answers. The man had looked as if he had something to hide, and there had been the distinct look of an addict in his eyes.
“His wife runs the coffee shop on the main street, right?” the detective asked Mr. Jones.
“Yes, she does. Robert helps her now and then, but usually stays at home. I think that he is ill or something.”
“Thank you, we will go and talk to him again,” he said to Richard, and called Sergeant Wood apart. “Call the precinct, and ask them to collect all the information they can find about Robert Brown.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant answered, and walked towards his car.
Davis looked down the street, and once again wondered if he would be able to find the answer to this mystery. It was becoming more and more complicated with each passing day. Now they knew a lot of things, much more than at the beginning, but there were still a lot of unanswered questions, and the boy was still missing.
“I am ready, sir, we can go now,” Wood said, while putting his phone away.
“Okay, then, let’s go talk to Mr. Brown.”
Chapter 13
After half an hour, they were comfortably seated in Mr. and Mrs. Brown’s living room, with a cup of coffee in their hands. Davis had asked to speak to both of them, and Mrs. Brown had invited them in.
“There have been some developments regarding the case of Thomas Harrison, and we will need you to answer a few more questions,” Detective Davis started the conversation politely.
“Mr. Brown,” he continued, once both of them looked at him. “We found this watch across the street from your house. Is it yours?”
“Yes...”
“No...”
Both of them answered together, and Davis waited to see what would come next. Mrs. Brown looked questionably at her husband, and stood up to walk the short distance to where Detective Davis was sitting. “This is my husband’s watch, detective,” she said, after looking carefully at it. “I gave it to him last year for our anniversary.”
“I must have been confused,” Mr. Brown added quickly. “Now that I see it clearly, I can say that this is my watch. I wasn’t even aware that I had lost it.”
“Can you tell us how it ended up hidden in the grass across the street?” the policeman continued.
“I have no idea... I...”
“That is really strange,” Mrs. Brown exclaimed. “We never stop the car over there.”
“I... I... might have...” her husband stuttered and then stopped.
“Mr. Brown, here is what I think happened,” Detective Davis said, after reading the message Wood received on his phone. “You were driving home that evening and did not see the boy coming out of the hole in the garden fence. Therefore, you hit him with your car, and he lost consciousness. You thought that he was dead and decided there and then to hide the crime. I am not sure when you called for help, but at some point, your brother got involved...”
“That is not true,” Mrs. Brown cried. “Please, Robert tell me that this is not the truth.”
Her husband, however, only shook his head and let the detective continue.
“You and your brother took the boy to an empty house in the neighborhood and from there, your brother called Ian Logan, his friend from Fairbanks. Mr. Logan sent one of his men with a van to dispose of the boy’s body. That is when you left the house, leaving the door open so that he could enter it. Am I right, so far, Mr. Brown?”
“Yes,” the other man said. “I called my brother immediately and he told me to take the body and drive to that house.”
“Do you know that the boy was still alive when you left him in that empty house?”
“No, that is impossible,” Robert Brown exclaimed. “He wasn’t breathing.”
“The man Logan sent found the boy alive,” Davis disagreed with him. “You could have called for help right after the accident and saved us all from this.”
“I thought that he was dead and my brother said that he would take care of everything...” the man sobbed. “I am so sorry, I am really sorry...”
By that time, Mrs. Brown was crying, while Wood went to speak on the phone.
“So you had no idea they found the boy alive?” Davis clarified.
“Yes,” Brown said. “After we left the boy in that house, my brother said that we should never talk about that. So I never asked what happened after I left, and my brother never told me anything.”
“Where can we find your brother?”
“I don’t know,” Brown said. “What is going to happen to me now?”
“You will pay for everything you did, and I would really like to see how you are going to face Tommy’s family,” Davis said, before asking Sergeant Wood to arrest Mr. Brown.
The other Mr. Brown, however, this man’s brother, was not so easy to find. Davis and Wood arrived at the town hall and then at his house, only to be told that he had just left. Later, they learned that he had found out that the police were speaking again with his brother, and he had run before the police could reach him.
Mr. Brown was the mayor of Stronghill, and his involvement in the kidnapping of Thomas Harrison made the case even
more complicated.
That evening, the small town of Stronghill filled with reporters and video cameramen. Tommy’s family was assaulted by people, who hunted for some new big news and did not care about their feelings. Sergeant Wood was the one, however, who told them about the accident and Mr. Brown’s involvement in the case.
They all reacted differently to the news, but he could see that all were angry with the man and his actions.
“If only he had called us...” Sarah murmured.
“Yes, that would have been the best thing to do,” the sergeant agreed with her. “The boy, according to the man who was called later, was okay, with only a few bruises on him. Things became complicated when they tried to hide what happened and involved more people in it.”
“Did you find the mayor?” Jake asked, hopeful that it all would end soon.
“We are looking for him,” Wood said.
They found him later that day, hidden inside a small hut deep into the woods. Sergeant Wood used the skills he had learned from his grandfather to follow him from where he had left his car on the road.
At that time of the year, the woods around Stronghill were all green and filled with bird song. The sergeant had no difficulty following the path left by the heavy city man, who was probably still dressed in a suit. Davis had asked for additional police help, and now the officers were slowly closing the circle around the small hut.
Sergeant Wood called at him to get out, but as an answer, Brown shot at them.
Chapter 14
That night, Davis, Wood, and the rest of the policemen stayed in the woods. The hut was completely surrounded, but the mayor still hoped to get away. The detective tried a few times to talk to him and convince him to give up, but nothing worked.
“If you come any closer, I will shoot you,” he answered back.
Well after midnight, Wood saw him trying to run from the back side of the hut, and before he could react, the mayor pointed his gun at one of the officers. After a short skirmish, the mayor was hit in the chest and fell on the ground.
