Tom Reed Thriller Series

by Rick Mofina

  “What makes you think so?”

  “A couple of things. What we heard today from the man who sold him the pickup and boat.” Hill glanced at his file folder of notes. “Mr. Urlich described the buyer as a ‘holy man’ who muttered about it being ‘destiny’ that he found the boat, and rambled about ‘life, death and resurrection.’ That he needed the boat to ‘find his children.’”

  The room fell quiet.

  “And there is one other element that may or may not be another indicator of your guy being driven by a religious fantasy and that’s found in the full legal names of the children.” Hill printed them on the chalkboard: Daniel Raphael Becker and Gabrielle Michelle Nunn. “Raphael and Gabrielle, if spelled this way”--Hill printed “Gabriel” on the board--“are the names of angels.”

  “Angels?” someone repeated.

  Hill heard the comment as he placed the chalk in the tray.

  “In Christian theology, angels are supernatural intercessors for God. Our guy may think the children are angels of some sort. I believe he looked for these children because they have ‘angel’ names, that his mission is directly connected to his personal tragedy, which he has either relived or plans to relive with Becker and Nunn.”

  Hill brushed chalk dust from his hand.

  “If you find out who this guy is and learn his background, you have a shot at learning what he has done, or plans to do.”

  At that moment the elusive lead hit Sydowski full force.

  You know, Inspector, I’ve been participating in the university bereavement group.

  Reed wrote about it in the Star. And Reed came to him after the press conference on Gabrielle’s abduction, after seeing the blurry video!

  Walt what if I recognize this guy? He looks like someone I met.

  Reed had met Angela Donner’s study group, but no one in the task force had thought to investigate those people--people who had suffered traumatic psychological pain involving children!

  SIXTY-TWO

  “Zach?”

  Why didn’t he answer her? Ann Reed pulled herself together, taking stock of the woman staring back from her dresser mirror. Tousled hair, tearstained eyes, the lines of her face.

  “Zachary?”

  She concentrated on hearing a response. Nothing. Give it time.

  What a pathetic sight she was. A grown thirty-three-year-old woman, mother of a nine-year-old son, a university graduate with her own business. And where was she? Living in the same room where she played with Barbie dolls, looking into the same mirror she looked into when she was a child, dreaming of how perfect her life would be.

  How had this happened? How had it turned out this way?

  “Zach, please come in here, we have to talk.”

  No answer. Must be angry at her and his father. Could she blame him? They had put him through hell. Maybe he was jet lagged after this morning’s flight from Chicago and was napping. That was fine. She craved sleep herself. But she had too much to do. She had to put this mess on a back burner and check her stores. She needed a shower.

  Her mother was right, she thought, as the hot water soothed her. She came down hard on Tom. She had overreacted. He was working hard. The kidnappings were a big story, out of the ordinary. And the paper putting him on probation didn’t make it any easier for him.

  The taps squeaked as she turned off the water.

  Tom must be in agony.

  Let him stew for a while. She would call him tonight and they would decide where to go from here. She still loved him and was willing to attempt a salvage operation. If he was.

  “Zachary?”

  Ann pulled on a pair of blue jeans, a fresh T-shirt, brushed her hair, then knocked softly on her son’s bedroom door.

  No answer. Ann opened the door.

  “Zach--” Ann stopped dead. He was gone. Where is he?

  Calling his name, she searched upstairs, the bathrooms, the other bedrooms. Not a trace. Strange. He must’ve slipped downstairs. “Zachary!” Where could he be?

  Ann stomped through the house. “Zachary Michael Reed!” He hated his middle name. She only used it to telegraph anger to him. No Zach.

  She went outside, slamming the door behind her. She was getting annoyed. Didn’t she tell him to go upstairs and stay in his room? She checked the garage. His bicycle was untouched. The front and backyards. Nothing. Hands on her hips, she exhaled her irritation. She didn’t need this. Not now.

  Zach wasn’t in the street, or at the corner store with the pinball machines he loved, or in the small vacant lot where the neighborhood kids played a half-block away. Two boys there, about twelve, clothes streaked with grease, were struggling to replace a chain on an overturned bike. “Hi fellas.”

  They traded glances, then sized her like she was an invader. Parents never entered this realm looking for kids. Beckoning was done by little sibling messengers. Reading Ann’s face, defense shields went up. Whoever Zach was, he was in serious trouble. One of the pair moved his foot stealthily, nudging a pack of Lucky Strikes under a jacket lying on the ground. Ann pretended she didn’t notice.

  “You sure you haven’t seen him a little while ago, guys? His name is Zach Reed. He’s nine-years-old, blondish hair, wears new sneakers, uh, Vans, and a Giants ball cap, uhmm-- ”

  “Zach? The little kid from across the Bay living with Granny down the street?” asked the bigger kid. He possessed the aura of a bully.

  “That’s right! Did you see him?”

  “Yesterday, but not today.”

  She studied these boys--strangers to her but known to her son, realizing she had opened a secret door to Zach’s life, that she no longer knew every detail of the child she had brought into this world. Nine years old and he knew older boys who smoked, boys who were practiced liars. It scared her.

  The smaller boy squinted up at her. “Is he in big trouble?”

  Ann covered her mouth with her hand, eyes watering.

  “No. I just want to find him.”

  After calling his name and searching a three-block radius around the house, it enveloped her: the cold fear that Zach was missing.

  Ann grabbed the phone and began punching the numbers for her mother at the library. No. She sniffed and hung up. He didn’t know his way on campus. But maybe he did? But Mom would call if he suddenly materialized. Ann returned to his room. Maybe he was back?

  “Zachary?”

  His room was empty.

  Defeated, she sat on his bed, shaking as she wept. Where are you? Why are you doing this to me? Zach’s black nylon travel bag yawned from the foot of the bed, opened, but not unpacked. It appeared as if he started unpacking, and took a few things out before changing his mind. She looked around his room. Where was his portable computer game? His CD player? His little knife? He treasured those things. She went to the dresser and lifted it slightly. His stash of cash, savings from his allowance, was gone. She looked around again. So were his jacket and school backpack. He’s run away.

  She called Tom’s place, letting the phone ring. His machine clicked on. She left a message, urging him to call her immediately. She hung up and dialed another number. She had an idea.

  “San Francisco Star newsroom,” said a hurried voice.

  “I’d like to talk to Tom Reed. This is his wife. It’s urgent.”

  Her request was met with an unusually long silence.

  “Hello?” Ann said.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Reed. I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, uh. Tom was, uh--” the voice dropped to a confidential whisper. “He...as of yesterday, he no longer works here. I’m sorry.”

  She hung up and sat down. That was what he was trying to tell her. It explained why he missed them at the airport, why he had been drinking. He was fired. She buried her face in her hands.

  Time to get it in gear, Annie. Where was the most likely place Zach would go? To his father’s.

  Okay. She would drive across the Bay to Tom’s rooming house. She stood. Wait!
What if Zach returns? She should wait here.

  She brushed her tears away, grabbed the phone, and punched Tom’s number in again, letting it ring and ring and ring.

  She would keep calling until she broke that freaking machine.

  SIXTY-THREE

  God was present.

  Edward Keller felt the intoxicating heat of His love. It was overpowering--he was swirling in it, as he hurried through Berkeley for San Francisco, delighting in the celestial trumpeting that melted into horn honking, waking him to the fact that his rental van was drifting toward oncoming traffic. Keller shrugged it off.

  He had found Michael the Archangel. He had gazed upon him.

  Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus.

  The transfiguration was near, brushing against his fingers. All he had to do was obtain Michael, the last angel.

  The Lord would illuminate the way.

  For God will send His angels to watch over them. And they shall embrace them and carry them to Heaven.

  Waiting for the light to change at an intersection west of the campus along Center, Keller feasted obsessively on a thumbnail. He was planning his route to the Bay Bridge, when a miracle blazed like a prophet’s comet before his eyes.

  “Sweet Jesus!” He couldn’t believe it! It was Michael!

  Heaven’s warrior!

  Keller managed only a glimpse, a mind-searing glimpse of nine-year-old Zachary Michael Reed, wearing a bulging backpack and crossing Center. He was walking.

  He was alone.

  Alone!

  Keller drove ahead for a block and tucked his van into a parking space ahead of a larger cargo truck, out of sight. He adjusted his passenger-side mirror, catching Michael’s distant reflection.

  And behold the earth shook and God’s angel descended from the skies. His eyes were like lightning, and any who opposed him were struck dead.

  The boy’s image grew with each step, quickening Keller’s pulse. He was sweating. What should he do? What if Michael spotted him and became suspicious? He had to remain calm. In control, as he was with the others.

  I am cleansed in the light of the Lord.

  The final challenge.

  Michael stopped at a store, less than three car lengths away. Had he noticed the van? He couldn’t have. Keller adjusted the mirror again. It looked like a hobby store. Michael peered into the window, then went inside. Where were the adults? Was he allowed to go into the store alone? Keller waited. No one else appeared. The boy was alone.

  It was a sign.

  He must act on it.

  Dominus Deus sabaoth.

  Keller scurried to the back of the van, watching the storefront from its tinted rear windows. He quickly changed into a shirt, tie, dress pants, and suit jacket. The same outfit he used for his insurance man. He knotted the tie, combed his hair neatly, and slid on a pair of dark aviator glasses.

  The van’s side door rolled open.

  Anyone watching with a modicum of interest would have seen a very serious, professional-looking man of authority stepping from his new van to attend to an important business matter. If they guessed he was a cop, they would be right, Keller would tell them confidently if pressed. For in his breast pocket he carried the leather-cased laminated photo ID and shield of Randall Lamont, Special Investigator for the State of California, a personality he had created after sending fifteen bucks to a mail-order house that advertised in the back of a detective magazine.

  But Keller knew no one was watching, or cared.

  Except God.

  And He was lighting the way.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  “Inspector Turgeon? Inspector Sydowski?”

  “Yes,” Turgeon said.

  Professor Kate Martin stepped from the door of her condo, indicating two sofas facing each other over a glass-and-rattan coffee table, the centerpieces of her living room overlooking the Golden Gate and Pacific. A hint of hyacinths lingered.

  Although she was barefoot in Levi’s and a long-sleeved, ratty flannel shirt, Martin moved with the swanlike elegance of a self-assured woman. But Sydowski’s deeper reading picked up the unease in her eyes. Her hair, pulled back with a navy barrette, was loosening. She corralled the wild strands slipping in front of her face, revealing bright white flecks on her hands. She folded her arms across her chest. “I was painting a bookcase when you called.”

  Turgeon and Sydowski saw the file folders stacked on the coffee table. Martin had obviously stopped painting to scour through them.

  “Sit down, please. Be comfortable. I’ve made some raspberry tea. Would you care for some? I have coffee, too, if you like?”

  “Tea would be fine,” Turgeon said.

  “And Inspector Sy-DOW-ski? I hope I’m pronouncing it correctly?”

  “You are. No tea for me, thanks.” Then he thought of something as she started for the kitchen. “Dr. Martin?”

  She stopped and smiled.

  “By chance, would you have any Tums?”

  “I’m sorry, no. I do have Alka-Seltzer.”

  “That’ll do, thanks.”

  The chicken sandwich Sydowski had inhaled during the briefing was jitterbugging through his system. It nearly burned a hole in his stomach during the drive over as Turgeon read aloud, for the second time, every word of the article the Star had recently published on Martin’s bereavement research study.

  The Homicide Detail’s secretary had clipped the story, “as per the lieutenant’s instructions.” Leo was a pain that way about the local papers. Anything with the word “murder” in it activated her scissors. But what with the Yellow Ribbon Task Force working a green light, Gonzales never got around to reading this one. And Sydowski, a scrupulous reader of crime stories, missed it. When he approached Gonzales immediately after the FBI’s profiler went on about the bad guy suffering psychological pain involving children, Gonzales ordered the secretary to get the story.

  It was written by Tom Reed.

  “First he messes us up on the Donner file--what is it with this guy? Flora, can you make some copies of this please?”

  Leo’s eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened on his unlit cigar as Sydowski told him how Reed had tiptoed up to him after the news conference on the Nunn abduction, after seeing the fuzzy video and composite. How he hinted about recognizing the bad guy.

  “This is a huge lead, Walt! You and Linda find the prof and see if anyone in her group fits the FBI’s profile.”

  Sunlight probed the prismatic crystal glass of fizzing antacid Martin set before him. When she offered imported Scottish shortbread cookies, Sydowski had to restrain himself from unloading on her about the gravity of their visit. Lady, this ain’t a tea party.

  Martin had priceless information and Sydowski wanted it. With two children missing, and most likely dead, he and their parents had a right to it. He was here to claim it. He swallowed some Alka-Seltzer, gritted his teeth, and nodded to the files.

  “Are you prepared to help us, Doctor?”

  Turgeon left her tea untouched and produced her notepad.

  “Yes. After we talked on the phone, I reviewed the files of my research subjects and I think, uhmmm, I think...uhm, I think one man may, uhm…I’m sorry.”

  Martin was coming apart. She stared mournfully at the files, gripping her knees. Her eyes were glistening when she tried to speak again. She was stunned with embarrassment. Fear.

  “I’m concerned about patient-client confidentiality.”

  “But you’re not their doctor?” Turgeon said.

  “Yes, but I entered into an agreement with each subject for the research. They all volunteered.”

  “Doctor, does the profile suggested by the FBI fit one of your subjects?” Sydowski tapped the files. ‘We can get a warrant.”

  Martin looked at Turgeon and Sydowski, her eyes drowning in the whirlpool that engulfs a person once they learn that a dark force dwells under the skin of a person they thought they knew. Sydowski had seen that look break on the faces of a killer’s family as they struggled with shame, remors
e.

  It was heartbroken, pleading:

  Please don’t judge us.

  How could we have missed it?

  What could we have done?

  Their anguish consumed them as if they had helped plunge the knife, squeeze the trigger, or tighten the ligature. They were yoked with blame and pain, becoming the murderer and the victim, condemned to die a piece at a time for the rest of their lives.

  Eyes downcast, Martin cleared her throat, touched her face with the back of her hand. She grasped the top file, retrospectively flipping through the yellow pages of her handwritten notes.

  “This is my file on Edward Keller. He participated in my research. He was a walk-in. His is the most unusual case of prolonged grief reaction I’ve ever experienced, evolving into stages of delusion.”

  “Doctor, please,” Sydowski said. “Does the profile fit him?”

  Martin swallowed. “Like a tailor-made suit.”

  It only took a few minutes for her to recount Keller’s case history and everything she knew about him: his fantasies, his religious delusions, how he reacted suspiciously to Tom Reed when he arrived to write on the bereavement group, how Keller demanded not to be photographed or identified before ultimately storming out.

  Turgeon took notes. Sydowski steepled his fingers and listened.

  “You ever fear he would act out his delusions?” Sydowski said.

  Martin shook her head, burying her face in her hands. “I’ve read the papers, watched the TV news on the abductions. I’ve seen the grainy video of the suspect, the composite sketch. Once, for a second, I thought there was a resemblance to Edward, but I dismissed it. I never thought in those terms. I never thought, I--”

  “Don’t beat yourself up.” Sydowski began reading Keller’s file.”

  “It’s subconscious denial. I counsel people who do this.”

  “Where do we find him?” Sydowski asked.

  “I don’t know. The number and the address he gave me are invalid.” Martin fished Keller’s personal information sheet from the file for Sydowski. “I just never made the connection, never grew suspicious. The signs were evident. I knew he needed extensive help. I suggested it to him. How did I miss...how could I...the people I am studying have lost children...I never--”