Lost in the Darkness (Crusaders of the Lost Book 1)

by William Mark

  “We found this one girl, recently in San Francisco. Her name was Charlotte.” Curt smiled at the remembered image of the pretty, blonde girl walking from the Sprinter Van to her parents in such a remarkable reunion.

  “Yeah?” Tracy saw the highlight bring a small smile to his face.

  “Yeah, and I sat there watching her mother thank God for bringing their daughter back to her.”

  Tracy fought back a tear at the story and at the jealously she felt for the woman.

  “And it feels good being able to bring that kind of joy back into someone’s life, but at the same time, I feel a piece of me die each time. The sliver of hope that I have keeps getting smaller and smaller, and soon there won’t be any left.”

  “It’s all we can do though. Hold onto the hope that he’s brought back to us one day.”

  “And that’s where I get angry.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m his father,” Curt said, anger adding to his tone. “And I shouldn’t have to wait on hope. That’s why I’m out there looking. We both know no one else is.”

  It was true, she thought. She maintained her full time job, but on the weekends and on most nights, she routinely drove by the softball complex during softball games, his favorite restaurants, and the movies, hoping to find him. She even checked the ice cream shop where she took him for a sweet treat when his father worked late, hoping beyond hope that his captor was decent enough to let him indulge in a few of his favorite things and that she’d find him there. But, past that, she knew no one else was looking…besides Curt.

  A detective from TPD, an old squad mate of Curt’s, checked in on the rarest occasion, like when a possible lead came in, but the detective had a case load to attend to and knew that he couldn’t dedicate much time, if any, without something tangible to go on. It wouldn’t be fair to all of the other victims who needed his attention.

  Tracy sat up in the bed, pulling the sheets up with a skeptical look on her face. She looked over at Curt seriously.

  “So…what are you going to do now? I assume your team is still back in Oklahoma?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know. I guess I’ll head back and meet back up with them.”

  “So there’s nothing more to do here? I mean, with that Crime Stoppers’ tip?”

  “Not really. I mean, the tag didn’t come back, and the closest we got to a lead didn’t pan out, so yeah, I mean, it’s done for now.”

  Tracy thought for a minute and started to bite her tongue but decided otherwise, and she didn’t care if she overstepped some boundary.

  “Answer me this—would you have stopped at that when you were working a case?”

  “Huh?”

  “I was never a cop or a detective, but I know you. I’ve certainly heard enough of your stories and listened to your cases to know you are one persistent dick!”

  Unsure if that was an insult or a compliment, Curt looked at her puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I remember when you were able to connect the dots in cases that most just ignored or overlooked. You paid attention to details and you stuck to your guns, no matter what. That was what made you a great detective.”

  Tracy smiled and then looked down bashfully. “You remember how you got me to start dating you?”

  Curt chuckled. “Yeah, I do. I must have asked you out ten times before you said yes.”

  “It was thirteen times, and I only agreed because you swore to never ask again if I went out with you that one time.”

  Curt smiled at the memory. He was glad he was persistent even back then.

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that you never used to accept ‘no’ for an answer. So why are you doing it with this tip? Maybe there’s something there. What else have we got to lose?”

  She was right; there was nothing else. Curt’s mind started to race, much like it did when he focused on a case that stood out. He felt reenergized. He thought about the tip and what was specifically said. He put himself in the call taker’s place and imagined answering the phone and taking down the information. It was possible that they got the characters of the tag mixed up or wrote it down wrong. Human error was an unfortunate curse in police work but not completely irreparable. He would start there in the morning.

  Chapter 26

  The lights were dim in the lobby of the Vail Police Department which added to the dreary weather outside casting a gloomy feel on the world. Tony Mason sat patiently in an uncomfortable plastic chair, waiting to speak to the detective in charge of the shooting at the chalet on the bluff. He sat across from a woman and a small child, also waiting, but for a different reason. She had a nice shiner on her left eye which was swollen shut and a deep shade of purple. A busted lip accented the noticeable injury, and she held a disposition reserved only for the abused. She managed to fight through the physical pain to entertain the unsuspecting child who would grow up in a house of violence. Mason avoided eye contact and hoped that she didn’t find out he was a news reporter and demand a story about her marital woes.

  A few patrol officers walked through, apparently a sign that it was shift change, and they were hitting the streets. One of the officers stopped to talk to the battered woman and began taking her report. Mason looked for the detective, but he wasn’t there. Finally, after another ten minutes, a gruff looking man with an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth leaned through a glass door looking at Mason.

  “You the reporter?” he asked. His voice sounded rough like sandpaper.

  “Yeah, are you Detective Rankin?”

  “Yeah, can we do this outside so I can smoke?”

  “Sure, fine with me.”

  Rankin led the reporter out of the lobby and into the parking lot. He quickly lit up the cigarette and took a long, lingering pull of the nicotine-filled smoke and let it out in the cold damp air. The exhaled plume hung heavy in the wet air, causing Mason to cough.

  “Sorry.”

  “So, I wanted to know if anything panned out further from the girls in Denver. Did they shed any further light on the situation?”

  “Yes, actually they did, but we’re a little stuck.”

  “Okay, maybe I can help?”

  “How is that?”

  “Tell me what you have so far, and I should be able to fill in some gaps.”

  “You can go fuck yourself with the ‘show me yours, and I’ll show you mine’ crap; I don’t have to tell you shit, and you know it. Tell me how you can help, or I go smoke in the back parking lot where you can’t go.”

  Mason hated when the cops stone-walled him like this, but he was right. It was a symbiotic relationship the media shared with the police, both have different motives, both serving a purpose, but neither wished to share. It was common all over the country, and he was used to the game. It was still worth a try.

  “Fine. I’ve been following a lead on a woman who has been funding the efforts of a team that works outside the law and targets missing children.” Mason continued by telling the detective what he knew of the team up to this point.

  Rankin had been around. He had seen a lot of things in his long law enforcement career and wasn’t surprised by much of anything anymore, but this was a first even for him. His face distorted in confusion as Mason explained how he had interviewed a family in southern California who had their child, missing for almost seven years, suddenly reappear. As Mason followed up on the story, the family let it slip that a group of four people had brought their son back to them, no questions asked. He also explained how he learned that it was Alexis Vanderhill who had set up everything with the family for the kid to be returned.

  “But before I could print the story, the family recanted for some reason, and I had to pull the story. I tried to run it anyway, but they had some clout, and it was squashed completely.”

  “Okay, I fail to see the connection. I’m not dealing with missing children, just a dead con-artist and two dead illegals running a whore house in my city.”

&nb
sp; “I see your point, but I’ve been keeping tabs on Vanderhill, and she flew into Denver the morning after the shooting.”

  “And? Denver is a big city, a lot of people visit. Hell, the Broncos play at home this weekend; maybe she’s a fan.”

  “You’re right.”

  The detective grew impatient and threw down his cigarette and stamped it out on the ground. “I’m done unless you have anything more.” When Mason didn’t say anything, he turned to walk away.

  Mason held his ace as long as he could, but it was clear that the detective didn’t want the ally, so he needed to convince him otherwise.

  “Was one of the ‘suspects’ a white male wearing a trench coat?”

  The detective stopped abruptly and twisted back around. He studied the reporter with aged skepticism. Mason could tell the assessment of his question was churning in his mind. From his obvious body language, the seasoned detective was ready to listen. Rankin reached for another cigarette and lit it without taking his eyes off Mason.

  “Okay, you got my attention.”

  ***

  Mason picked up take-out Chinese and brought it back to his hotel room after meeting with Detective Rankin. He opened the small, white, cardboard container and dug into his lo mein as he fired up his laptop to get to work. After providing the descriptions of all the players from the missing California boy to the detective, he opened up more and gave him more intimate details about the shooting. He verified that the girls were illegal immigrants somehow smuggled into the country by a network of human trafficking. He stated that ICE and the FBI were heading up that portion of the investigation while he was just focused on the homicide angle. Mason knew he had multiple stories that would spawn from this and made a note to call the Denver field office of the FBI for comments on the trafficking case.

  In turn, Rankin provided a more detailed description of the parties involved in the shoot out to compare to what he already knew. He was aware of the man in the trench coat, and that was on point with what the girls reported. They stayed on par when they described a skinny, nerdy looking, white male. Mason remembered that the missing boy from California was fond of the nerdy guy because they played video games together while they drove him home in some kind of large van, but the girls added a new description to fill the role of heroine for the story. Rankin relayed about how this woman climbed in through the window and bravely fought against the traffickers to help free them. Mason was impressed and wished the story had more legs than it did, but he could feel it coming together. It was still in its infancy, and he hoped to cultivate it into something sensational.

  Mason added the description of a mid-thirties, white female, blonde hair pulled into a ponytail and strong cheek bones, average height and average weight to his working file of team participants. He leaned back and stared at the words on the screen, hoping they would soon translate into a story he could print.

  He devoured the rest of the lo mein, cracked open the fortune cookie, and tossed out the fortune without reading it. He checked his email and updated his status to the supervising editor. He told him that he would have a piece on human trafficking with some quotes from the FBI field office for the next print. He didn’t want to say too much about the lead on the secretive team as he wanted everything in line before he printed that story.

  After sending the emails, he did a Google search of Alexis Vanderhill. He routinely checked her name, hoping that some connection to the team or their actions would somehow reveal itself, but nothing had panned out yet. There was just something about her that he couldn’t ignore.

  There was a new entry under the Google search with a link to an article in the society page in the San Francisco Chronicle. He clicked the link and saw that it was dated only about two weeks prior. The article covered a fundraising gala for the Missing Person’s Society and Alexis Vanderhill, notable advocate for missing children, was present. Mason read the article, and it was filled with a lot of fluff but made its point with the importance of the awareness. As he scrolled down, he saw there were pictures from the gala, and he clicked on the gallery to see all of the guilty, rich people giving away money in order to feel less ostentatious. He found a picture of Alexis Vanderhill and stared for only a moment.

  She’s pretty hot, he thought to himself with no one to pass judgment.

  He continued through the rest of the pictures and didn’t recognize anyone else, but when he came to a second picture of Vanderhill in her splendid silver gown, he nearly choked on the last bite of the fortune cookie. In the picture, standing next to Vanderhill, was a blonde woman who appeared to be in her mid-thirties with her hair tightly pulled back in a ponytail. She was dressed a few degrees on the casual side. Unlike the more formal party goers, she sported a modest, dark gray pantsuit. Mason saw that she had well-defined cheek bones and fit the description of the unknown heroine from the shooting in Vail.

  He read the caption under the picture:

  Alexis Vanderhill, advocate for missing children stands next to Rachel Goodwin who is attending the fundraiser in honor of her missing sister, Rhonda Goodwin, missing over twenty years.

  Mason flipped back to the description Rankin gave him as relayed from the trafficking victims of the heroine and then looked back to study the picture of Rachel Goodwin. He was quickly convinced that he had just identified his first team member.

  “Hello, Rachel.”

  Chapter 27

  Despite over a decade of waking up in the same house, Curt sprang up in bed confused and disoriented by his surroundings, a by-product of life on the road accompanied by terror filled nightmares. He fell back to the bed exhausted and closed his eyes in relief, remembering the events of the night before—something that wasn’t necessarily a given with his drunken binges. He realized he had gotten a restful night’s sleep and wondered if that was his subconscious telling him to stay home.

  An unfamiliar sound pulled his eyes fully awake as he sat up in the bed. It was the sound of water running. The shower was going, and a small plume of steam billowed from the crack between the door frame and the bathroom door. Tracy’s side of their bed was empty and already folded back neatly as if she had never been there. The only trace that remained behind was her sensual and arousing scent.

  Curt dressed as the awkwardness began to return, and the feeling of intrusion grew. The shower turned off, and the door opened to air out the steamy room. Tracy stood there, covered in a towel wrapped tightly around her wet body as her wet hair hung to the side. Even in her natural form, she was still stunning. During his absence, Curt held onto her image in his head, but over the course of two years, that image seemed to fade more and more, except for the look of disappointment he had misinterpreted from the night of Josh’s disappearance.

  He stood there, half stepped into his pants, staring at her. She smiled.

  “Hey,” she said. “Good morning.”

  “Hey, g’mornin.” He snapped out of the boyish gawking and finished getting dressed.

  Tracy went about her morning routine as if the night before had no impact. She was always the first to say if something bothered her or wasn’t right, but Curt noticed that she was now skillful in hiding her true emotions. It was something she had obviously developed to help cope with the stress and the horrific situation she was thrown into, as there was no manual for how to deal with a missing child.

  After he finished getting dressed and ready for the day, Curt headed for the door. He hated to have to tell Tracy goodbye again, but he knew he had to continue looking for their son. She was right about his not accepting no for an answer. He was so worn down and exhausted that he couldn’t take another lead that fizzled out.

  She saw something inside of him that he had long since forgotten. It was her unwavering belief that he would one day find Josh and bring him home, and this gave him the hope he needed to continue.

  He avoided looking her in the eyes as she stood in the kitchen making breakfast. He wanted to explain what the night before meant to him a
nd that he loved her so very much, but he was not going to stop looking for their son; he just hoped that she could try and understand.

  “I need to get going,” he said softly.

  She didn’t bother turning around. “I know.”

  He looked over at her but failed to find the words to make things right. He knew nothing he could say would ever make it right.

  “Goodbye Tracy,” he said. He pushed away from the countertop and headed for the door. She stood still with her head bowed, unable to look at him either. She knew he was going to leave, but it still hurt as much as it did the first time.

  He closed the front door tightly behind him and walked along the wet sidewalk and up the driveway to the Crown Vic. As he reached the car door, he felt a presence behind him and turned around to see Tracy standing in the driveway. She was looking at him longingly, expecting more from him and as if she had something to say. He stood frozen not knowing how to react.

  “I made you some coffee,” she said as she walked up to him. She presented him with an old thermos that he used to use to carry his morning coffee into work. It was a subtle reminder of the life he once had. It read: “Bad Cop No Donut,” a sentiment he had taken up in an earlier attempt to lose weight.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” It wasn’t necessarily a lie but vague enough to avoid committing to a time frame. He sealed the statement with a smile that carried with it a glimmer of the hope that she had rejuvenated.

  “You do that, Curtis,” she said as she hugged him tightly around the neck. “Go find him, so you can come home!”

  ***

  The Governor’s Square Mall sat in the southeast sector of Tallahassee along the main thoroughfare of Apalachee Parkway, just down from the capitol building. One of the city’s best views of the capitol was found by coming westbound on the parkway, looking up to the hilltop that holds the first state capitol. The old three-story statehouse sat in the late evening shadow of the massive building just behind it. The view from the top of the capitol reached out for miles around the Big Bend area.