by James Swain
“Did he explain how the game worked?”
“Oh, yes. The abductor gave Sampson candy to entice him into playing, and a toy as a reward for playing. Teen Angel was certain about this.”
“Candy and a toy,” I said.
“Correct. Teen Angel said a specific brand of candy had been used, and was instrumental in keeping the boy quiet.”
“Which brand?” I asked.
“Milk Duds.”
“Why that brand and not some other?”
“I don’t know. Teen Angel also said that he thought Sampson was a precocious child. He believed the boy had an agile mind, which allowed his abductor to trick him into thinking his kidnapping was a game. Teen Angel said it was harder to trick a stupid child than a smart one.”
Vonell leaned back. I could see the dampness where his hands had rested on his jumpsuit. I said, “Anything else?”
“Yes, there was one other thing. Rather important, I think.”
“What’s that?”
Vonell started to answer, then began to violently cough. “I need some water. My throat is bone dry.”
Cheeks went into the hallway to fetch Vonell some water. I leaned forward in my chair, and gave Vonell a harsh look. I had seen predators pull this nonsense before. During an interrogation they would stop the action, and make another demand. I had come to the conclusion that it was a subconscious need to be in control, or feel like they were in control, even when they weren’t.
Cheeks returned with a paper cup filled with water. Vonell sipped the water, then spoke. “Teen Angel said the child had a special relationship with his abductor. He called it a bond of trust. He said that without that bond, the abduction could not have taken place.”
“You mean a prior relationship?” I said.
“Yes. He said the abductor was someone the boy had contact with on a regular basis.”
“A friend,” I said.
“That’s correct. I believe that’s everything,” Vonell said.
“If I wanted to contact Teen Angel, how would I find him?” I asked.
Vonell glanced over his shoulder at his attorney. The attorney gave him a nod that said it was okay to rat out his chat room buddy. Vonell resumed looking at me.
“Teen Angel works at a local theme park in security,” he said.
I rose from my chair and acted like I was done. I had one more question, and I knew that it had to be said at exactly the right time. I waited until Vonell had let his guard down, then pounced.
“Was Teen Angel involved in Sampson Grimes’s kidnapping?” I asked.
Vonell started to answer, then clamped his mouth shut.
“Yes or no?” I asked.
Vonell dropped his eyes to the floor.
“Answer me or the deal’s off,” I said.
His head snapped up. “But Detective Cheeks said—”
“To hell with what Detective Cheeks said. Yes or no?”
Sexual predators had a code of silence they rarely broke. But Vonell knew I’d make good on my threat. He let a moment pass, then replied.
“I believe he was,” he said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Do you believe me now?” I asked.
Cheeks stood over the sink in the men’s washroom, dousing his face with cold water. Lifting his gaze, he looked at me in the mirror. “Teen Angel might have helped kidnap the Grimes kid. Or he might be a closet pedophile who sits at his computer and fantasizes with other pedophiles about stealing kids. There are a lot of guys around who do that, you know.”
“Not Teen Angel,” I said. “He’s helped with abductions before.”
“You know that for a fact?”
“Yes. Teen Angel helped a guy named Ray Hicks abduct a little girl from an elementary school in Ocala. It was as clean as anything I’ve ever seen. I saw the e-mails Teen Angel sent Hicks. They spelled the whole thing out.”
“You’re saying this guy is a pro.”
“A pro’s pro.”
Cheeks patted his face with a paper towel. He was one of the few guys I knew who could clean himself up and not look any better. “How do we find him?”
“Vonell said he works in security for a local theme park,” I said. “Call the parks, and tell them you have evidence that a pervert is working for them. They’ll cooperate once they hear that.”
“You think so?”
“It always worked for me,” I said.
Vonell’s lawyer was waiting for us in the hallway. He’d written up an agreement on a legal pad that he shoved into Cheeks’s face along with a pen.
“My client is being arraigned this afternoon,” he said. “I need you to sign this statement stating that the charges against Vonell are being dropped from molestation with a minor to indecent exposure. You said you’d do this. It was part of our agreement.”
Cheeks took the pen and scribbled his name on the bottom. The lawyer stuck the pen in his pocket, and started to walk away.
“Can I see that?” I asked.
The lawyer handed me the agreement. I read it quickly, and saw how he’d painted Vonell into some harmless middle-aged guy who occasionally showed off his dick in public. Vonell had been arrested for molesting a teenager, a crime that would leave a deep psychological scar on his victim for the rest of her life. Somehow he’d forgotten to mention that, and I shredded the agreement before his disbelieving eyes.
“Get lost,” I said.
The lawyer followed us up the stairs, cursing his head off. When he didn’t stop, the sergeant on duty in the reception area escorted him out of the building.
I followed Cheeks to his office on the third floor. Case files covered the desk and floor, and the room’s shelving units sagged beneath the weight of missing person reports. Visible above the sea of paper was a phone, and a family photograph with Cheeks’s ex-wife razored out.
Cheeks got on the horn and called Broward’s three major theme parks. He spoke with their human resources departments, and using a threatening tone, obtained the names of each employee in security and their Social Security numbers, which he passed on to me.
“This is too easy,” he said.
“No one wants a pervert working for them,” I said.
Sitting at his computer, I accessed the sheriff’s department’s sexual predator website, which contained files of every known sexual predator in the United States. Entering each name and Social Security number into the search engine, I looked for a match.
On the twentieth name, I got a hit.
“Busted!” I said.
Cheeks came around to where I was sitting, and stared at the screen. The pervert’s name was Lonnie Lowman, and he had surfer-white blond hair and bedroom eyes. His charming good looks had no doubt attracted a sixteen-year-old girl in Seattle, who’d willingly gone to his home one weekend, before being held captive and molested. In the mug shot, Lowman was still glowing from his conquest.
I went through his file. Lowman had done three years in prison, and been paroled for good behavior. Part of his release had required him to register himself as a sexual predator at his new address. Lowman hadn’t done that. Instead, he’d traveled three thousand miles across the country and set up shop in Fort Lauderdale.
“Where does Lowman work?” I asked.
“Wet and Wonderful,” Cheeks said.
“That figures,” I said.
“How do you mean?”
“All of the kids are in bathing suits.”
Florida hadn’t invented theme parks, but it had certainly made them popular. There were theme parks devoted to cartoon mice, old movie studios, the Bible, and underwater dancing mermaids. The theme park where Lowman worked was called Wet & Wonderful, and featured hair-raising water rides for kids and the world’s largest swimming pool.
It was a gorgeous day and the park was jammed. As we crossed the parking lot, I tried to determine which was louder—the deafening roar of traffic on nearby I-95, or the high-pitched screams of kids riding the wave machines.
The pa
rk’s business office was attached to the ticket office. Cheeks showed his badge to a cashier, and we were ushered into a reception area. We declined coffee and did not take the chairs we were offered.
Soon the park’s female general manager appeared. She had a bluetooth stuck in her ear, a cell phone in one hand, and a walkie-talkie in the other. I wanted to ask her if she juggled, but didn’t think it was the right time for a joke.
“How can I help you gentlemen?” she asked.
“We need to speak to an employee named Lonnie Lowman,” Cheeks said. “I believe he works in your security department.”
“May I ask what this is about?”
“We’d like to question him in regard to an ongoing criminal investigation,” Cheeks said, making it as vague as possible.
The GM lifted the walkie-talkie to her face. Before she could radio Lowman, I stopped her.
“Please don’t do that,” I said.
“Excuse me?” the GM replied.
“Tell us where Lowman works, and we’ll go talk with him.”
A wall of resolution rose in the GM’s face. “I’d prefer to bring Lowman here, and have you question him in my office. I have the park’s reputation to think of, not to mention the traumatizing effect an arrest might have on the children in the park.”
“Lonnie Lowman is a convicted sexual predator,” Cheeks said. “Had your human resources department done a proper background check, you’d never have hired him. Tell us where he is, or I’ll drag your ass down to the station as well.”
Broward cops were required to take annual sensitivity training. It was obvious Cheeks had been sleeping through the classes. The GM led us outside, and pointed at an aqua blue trailer sitting behind a water slide on the opposite side of the park.
“He’s in there,” she said.
Back when I was a cop, I’d helped Wet & Wonderful beef up its security to prevent child abductions. I knew exactly what was in that trailer.
“Lowman works surveillance?” I asked.
“He runs it,” she said quietly.
“For the love of Christ!” Cheeks said.
“He might be watching us on a surveillance camera right now,” I said.
Smart people can see into the future. The GM’s wasn’t looking terribly bright, and she said, “That’s right, although he’s probably watching the pool or the water slide.”
“Where the kids are,” I said.
She nodded. I looked at the trailer. Lowman had done time for child molestation in Seattle. Even though I had never stepped foot in Washington State, I guessed the treatment he’d received in prison had been the same as it was for child molesters everywhere, and that he’d been routinely bullied and tortured by the other inmates, who’d made his life a living hell. More than likely, he’d taken steps to ensure he never went back to prison, including carrying an illegal handgun, planning an escape route in case of arrest, and having his passport handy.
“Where does Lowman park his car?” I asked.
“In the company lot,” the GM said.
“Would you be able to identify his car from the other employees’ vehicles?”
“Yes. Every employee has a parking pass that they leave on their dashboards. The pass has their name and photograph attached to it.”
“Your security people need to block Lowman’s car from leaving,” I said.
The GM called park security on her walkie-talkie, and told them what she wanted done. Hanging up, she said, “Lowman’s car is being blocked. What else can I do?”
I continued to look at the surveillance trailer. Two grown males walking through a sea of kids would be easy for Lowman to spot. If Cheeks and I weren’t careful, we might end up looking down the barrel of a loaded gun.
“I want you to call Lowman, and divert him until we enter the trailer,” I said. “Think you can do that without tipping him off?”
“Of course,” the GM said.
“Then do it,” Cheeks snapped.
The GM called Lowman as Cheeks and I entered the park.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Wet & Wonderful was a slab of concrete filled with water-themed attractions and concession stands. We shouldered our way through a sea of kids in wet bathing suits, and soon were wet as well. Cheeks was breathing heavily by the time we reached the trailer.
“You really should start exercising,” I said.
“Shut up,” Cheeks said.
Cheeks clipped his silver detective’s badge to his lapel and rapped loudly on the trailer door. A voice from within told us to enter.
“Remember to go slow,” I said.
“Right,” Cheeks said.
The trailer’s interior was dark and chilly, the walls lined with high-definition digital monitors showing the action outside. Lonnie Lowman sat at a desk with his back to the monitors, talking to the GM on a walkie-talkie. He said, “Let me call you back,” and hung up, his eyes frozen on Cheeks’s badge.
“Lonnie Lowman?” Cheeks asked.
Lowman nodded stiffly. He’d done a makeover since his mug shot, and now sported a short, conservative haircut, drugstore reading glasses, and a cosmetically altered nose. What hadn’t changed were his eyes; green and almost pretty, they darted back and forth between us like a caged animal’s. The hunter had become the hunted.
“We’d like to talk to you,” I said.
“Am I under arrest?” Lowman asked.
“No,” Cheeks said. “Your name came up during an investigation, that’s all.”
Cheeks leaned against the wall, while I stood across from Lowman’s chair. When I was a cop, I’d carried a pack of gum to break the ice during interrogations. It was a tradition I’d continued, and I offered Lowman a stick. He declined, and I stuck one into my mouth while staring at the monitors. There were twelve in all, displayed in a matrix. Six monitored the deep end of the swimming pool, where a giant slide deposited screaming kids into the water. On one of the monitors a girl came down the slide, and hit the swimming pool. The force of the water pulled the top of her bikini off. She came out of the water laughing, and with her mother’s help, got redressed. It was as innocent as eating a hot dog, but not meant to be seen by the eyes of a predator.
“My boss knows about this, doesn’t she?” Lowman asked.
“Afraid so,” I said, trying to control my temper. “If you cooperate, we’ll tell her you’re square, and there will be no harm done.”
I felt Lowman sizing me up. It was like being watched by an un-trustworthy dog. I continued to work my gum.
“All right, ask your questions,” Lowman said.
“Do you go by the name Teen Angel on the Internet?” Cheeks began.
Lowman’s face turned so red it looked like he had hives. “Who told you that?”
“Vonell Cook,” Cheeks said.
“Never heard of him.”
“He’s into molesting underage girls. You talk to him on a chat room called the Conspiracy Club,” Cheeks said.
Lowman stared at Cheeks, and said nothing.
“We had a chat with Vonell this morning at police department headquarters,” Cheeks went on. “Vonell shared with us your insights into the Sampson Grimes kidnapping. They were so interesting, we decided we wanted to meet you.”
Lowman twisted uncomfortably in his chair. “I had nothing to do with that. I’ll take a polygraph if you want me to. I didn’t steal that little boy.”
“Any idea who did?” I asked.
Lowman violently shook his head.
“You didn’t talk to him, and give him tips?” I said.
“No!”
“You don’t expect us to believe that, do you?”
“Look. I did a bad thing a few years ago in Seattle,” Lowman said. “But I did my time and paid my debt to society. I’ve changed. What I told Vonell and the other members of the Conspiracy Club were idle ramblings, nothing more.”
Sexual predators didn’t change. They could be scared straight or sent into hiding, but you couldn’t change them. Lowma
n was lying.
“You called Sampson’s abduction a game,” I said. “What did you mean by that?”
Lowman took off his glasses and shoved them into his shirt pocket. It was a bad move, for it showed how scared he was. “The boy was persuaded to leave his bedroom during the night, and to climb through a slit screen. He wasn’t taken. He was removed.”
“Meaning what?” I asked.
“Sampson was playing a game with his abductor,” Lowman said.
“Do you think it might have been one of Sampson’s parents?” I asked.
“No. Parents enforce the law. This game was an act of defiance. That was where the cut in the screen came in.”
I glanced at Cheeks out of the corner of my eye. He had gone white.
“But it was someone who knew Sampson,” I said.
“Knew him well,” Lowman said.
“You told Vonell that Milk Duds were involved in Sampson’s abduction,” I said. “How did you know that?”
Lowman looked furtively at the floor. I heard the uptick in his breathing, the air moving rapidly through his nostrils and pouring from his mouth. He almost sounded like he was running.
“I just guessed,” he said.
I grabbed the arms of his chair and shook it. Lowman’s head snapped up.
“Quit lying,” I said.
“I’m not lying,” he protested.
“Yes, you are. Keep it up, and Detective Cheeks will arrest you.”
Many criminals scoff at being arrested. Sexual predators do not. Going to jail is often the equivalent of a death sentence, and they will do anything to avoid it.
“Milk Duds are a favorite enticement among child abductors,” he said quietly. “Children like them, and they’re larger than most candy.”
“So?”
“A child can’t yell for help with a Milk Dud in his mouth. He has to spit it out first. That gives the abductor time to clamp his hand around the child’s mouth, and subdue him. It’s an old trick.”
“Did you tell Sampson Grimes’s abductor that?” I asked.
“I told you, I don’t know who abducted the Grimes boy.”
“How about Ray Hicks?”
Lowman jerked up in his chair.
