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

by William Mark

  Down the small hallway off of the living room were two opposing doors. He opened the first door to the left, and it appeared to be a master bedroom. The other door somehow beckoned Curt, and he held off looking through the master to check the other door. He opened it slowly, and what was inside hurt him down to his core. At the same time it validated the lead. It was a gut punch worth taking.

  A mattress with sheets draped on top, sat lonely and shoved in the corner of the room. In the other corner was a dresser, with a small television on top hooked up to a gaming system. The fading sunlight broke through dusty blinds in the window, giving the room a dismal feel. As he looked around, he noticed clothes and shoes for a young boy were strewn all over the carpet. Curt called out for Josh. Still no answer. He searched the closet and found it empty except for a few more clothes.

  The unexpected buzz from his pants pocket caught Curt off guard. He checked the caller ID and saw that it was Rachel Goodwin. He hesitated answering it but decided she might have valuable information.

  “Hello?” he answered quietly.

  “Have you found the place? Gregory’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, Louis checked his last tax return. No dependents claimed, but we do have a good employer location. He works for a law firm there in Valdosta, apparently he is some kind of paralegal. The firm handles mostly civil cases and adoption.”

  “Adoption, huh. Okay, thanks.” Curt would definitely be sitting on the firmw waiting to follow Gregory if he failed to show at the apartment.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “What do you mean? I’m here to find my son.”

  “You know what I mean!”

  He did. She was asking if he was going to kill Gregory. Was she making sure he was going to do it, or was she asking because she was hoping that he would not?

  “I don’t know right now.”

  “How ’bout you wait for us to get there? Let us help you, Curt. Let us do what we do best.”

  Curt thought about it but ignored answering the question as he turned back into the closet to keep searching. He reached in and slid the hanging clothes down the pole as he looked closely at each article.

  “Hello?” Rachel asked, waiting for a response.

  “I’m here.”

  “Well?”

  “I’m sorry. C’mon if you want to, but to be honest, I don’t know what I’ll do at this point. I just want one thing in this world more than anything….” Curt pushed a jacket aside in the closet, causing the shoulder to droop off of the hanger. He paused mid-sentence with what he saw.

  “I know that’s what you want, but you know we work better as a team. Please, let us help you.”

  Another long pause went by as Rachel waited for an answer. Curt snatched the jacket from the hanger and stepped away from the closet and into the remaining sunlight. Rachel called for him again but only got heavy breathing instead.

  Inside the jacket, Curt saw the name Josh, handwritten by a child inside the collar, a directive straight from his mother after losing his favorite one at school. He held it and stared at the name, praying to God that this was real and not a hallucination. He held up the jacket and brought it in as if his son were wearing it and hugged the jacket, taking in its smell. For a second, he caught the scent of his son, and he was transported back to a time before his life was so violently turned upside down.

  “He’s here, Rach…Josh is here,” he said, on the brink of joyful tears.

  Rachel Goodwin couldn’t hold back the grin that crossed her entire face as she listened to the update.

  “He’s there now? You have him?”

  Curt’s mind was a whirlwind of emotions. He clung to the jacket as if it were his lost son. He tossed the rest of the small room looking for any more evidence of his son’s existence. The clothes on the floor were recently worn, and this told him that Josh had been in that room within the last day. This coincided with the Crime Stoppers’ tip that Josh was seen in Tallahassee a few days before. As he recalled that image from the video, he saw the clothes he was wearing, now laying on the floor.

  “Um…no, but…,” Curt explained to Rachel what he had found, including the name in the jacket. She pleaded with him to leave the apartment and wait for the team to arrive.

  Curt thought about the joy he’d seen on the face of Charlotte Morgan’s mother that day in San Francisco, just like all the other times he brought a child back to their parent’s arms. He’d wondered when the day would come for him to experience that same level of happiness. That day was today.

  “Okay, I’ll wait—”

  Curt cut his sentence off as the unmistakable sound of a car door slamming shut came from just outside of the window. A shadow of a man moved past the window toward the front door to Gregory’s apartment. Curt moved to the window and moved the blinds just enough to see out. He saw the silver Honda facing the apartment and the backside of Glenn Gregory walking toward the community mailboxes. He knew it was him as he recognized the man’s walk from the security footage at the Governor’s Square Mall. He looked back at the Honda, but there was no Josh. He played back the sounds he had just heard and recalled only one door shutting, not two. Where the hell is Josh?

  “Everything okay?” Rachel asked, concerned for the sudden silence.

  “Gregory’s here. I gotta go.”

  “But Curt—” He pressed end and stuffed the phone in his jacket pocket. He felt the phone buzz again. He was sure Rachel was calling back, but he ignored it and stepped out into the living room. With Gregory showing up, Curt decided he could no longer wait for the team. Gregory was just outside of the apartment, and there was no sign of Josh. He would just have to get the answers from Gregory.

  He leaned up against the wall just behind the front door, waiting for him to come in. He withdrew his Glock and held it down by his side. He heard footsteps just on the other side of the door, the jingle of keys followed by Gregory engaging the lock only an arm’s length away. Curt took a deep breath as the door opened and enclosed him against the wall. Gregory’s hand blindly reached around to the interior side of the door and shut it as he looked down studying his mail. As the door shut, Curt ran up and kicked Gregory as hard as he could in the back of his left knee. Blindsided, Gregory collapsed to the floor. Curt whipped around from the momentum of the kick and smashed the handle of his Glock on the left cheek of the man, knocking him completely to the floor. Gregory’s mail sailed across the tile floor as the crushing blow of the ambush kept him on the ground.

  Curt stood over the man and kicked him in the side making him roll over onto his back. Gregory winced from the lingering effect of the kicks from his attacker. Looking up at the stranger, Gregory showed little sign of fear at the man in the trench coat. Curt found this odd. He knelt down next to Gregory who was still dazed from the blow and pointed the Glock at his head.

  “Where the hell is my son?”

  Gregory let out a defeated groan as he leaned up on his elbows. He remained lying on the floor, looking up at Curt with defiant eyes. He ignored the question as he reached up and touched his cheek, assessing the damage. There was a gash in his face from the butt of Curt’s gun that caused blood to seep out and run down his cheek.

  Curt grew impatient which quickly turned to anger at the man’s defiance. He backhanded the bleeding man on the floor for his dissention. He was inches away from his face; spit sprayed wildly in Gregory’s face as Curt yelled, “ANSWER ME, DAMMIT!”

  The defiance remained unwavering. “You must be the cop.” Gregory held a smug look on his face.

  Curt was caught off guard by the man’s response and reacted without thought. With lightning speed, Curt stood over Gregory and swung the cold, unforgiving steel of his gun hard across the face of the man with every ounce of strength he could find. Gregory’s head whipped back violently, absorbing the blow, and sending him into the realm of the unconscious as his body fell limp on the cold tile.

  Chapter 29

  Investig
ative journalism was what Tony Mason lived for. The thrill of chasing the unfiltered truth was what fueled his fire. Finding the little connections that spelled out the story that made it truly newsworthy was a satisfying rush. He assumed the feeling was similar for detectives working a case in search of a suspect. He had found a big investigative nugget when he saw the picture of Rachel Goodwin, and he was finally going to get his story, despite the efforts of Alexis Vanderhill.

  He stayed up late the night before after identifying the blonde, ponytailed heroine from the human trafficking case and dove head first into her background. He didn’t find much on Rachel, but the caption from the society page in The Chronicle gave him a lead to follow…her sister.

  Mason Googled Rhonda Goodwin’s name and found several articles from the 1993 abduction of her and her older sister, Rachel, from their neighborhood in Texas. He read where Rachel was found a few days later, disoriented and dehydrated, wandering around a nearby town. Rhonda was never found and was presumed dead. The suspect was never found or identified. He did find a couple of arrest reports where Rachel had been locked up for drunk and disorderly charges when she was in her early twenties. It didn’t give a lot of background, but the abduction angle gave him a theory of how this clandestine team was formed. He jotted down some notes on his notepad to follow up with later.

  Before leaving his hotel room, Mason stared at his cell phone and Detective Rankin’s card. He considered whether or not to share his findings regarding Rachel Goodwins possible involvement in the shooting. He had laid all his cards on the table and told the detective of Alexis Vanderhill. If he did his own research like Mason did, he should come up with the same results. So with that, he stowed the business card away and walked down to the lobby. He used the business center in the hotel and pulled up the picture of Rachel Goodwin and Alexis Vanderhill from The Chronicle’s website and printed out the picture he had found the night before. He pulled out his notepad and located the number Rankin had given him for the Orion Project. He dialed the number and talked to someone after identifying himself as a detective working with Rankin on the shooting. He explained that he wanted to fax a picture and have the girls look at the picture, hoping to identify the woman and whether she was involved in the shootout in Vail or not. The person on the other end agreed, and Mason held on the line while the fax went through.

  “I got it.”

  “Alright good; just call me back at this number after you’ve shown it to the girls, and try to be quick. We want to roll on this as soon as possible, okay?” Mason said in his best cop voice.

  “Sure…will do detective.”

  “Thanks.” Mason made sure they had his number and hung up the phone, awaiting the outcome of his little ruse. He walked out of the business center and into the small cafeteria set with a free breakfast. He wasn’t that hungry for food, just hungry for the story. He grabbed a coffee and muffin and sat, impatiently waiting for his phone to ring.

  Fifteen minutes later, after Mason emptied the cup of coffee, he got up for a refill. As he pushed down the lever to dispense more coffee, his cell phone chirped. He set the cup down even before the coffee was done pouring out, causing it to spill over the counter, and he pulled out his phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Uh, detective?”

  He had forgotten to answer the phone like a cop. He cursed himself for forgetting.

  “Yes, sorry. It’s me. What did you find out? What did they say?”

  “Not all of them, but most of the girls said the woman on the left, in the pants suit, was the woman from the house that night of the shooting.”

  “What about the woman on the right? Anything there?”

  “No, none of them recognized her.”

  Mason was dejected at the lack of an ID on Vanderhill but was satisfied at the confirmation on Goodwin.

  “Excellent…thank you for your help. Oh, and if you don’t mind, shred that picture please; we don’t want anyone to get any wrong ideas and impede our investigation.”

  “Oh, sure. We can do that. Glad to help.”

  Mason left his coffee cup on the counter and ran up to his room to pack. He was eager to head out and follow his new lead. With affirmation that Rachel Goodwin was one of Vanderhill’s team members, he knew he was getting close to figuring out exactly who they all were. He could feel the story growing and nearing the point where it was perfectly ripe to pluck and put into words.

  ***

  Mason spent the day canvassing the area hotels. He drove past the house on the bluff for another look and expanded his search outward, assuming they would have used a hotel that was nearby. He checked at least twenty different hotels and resorts ranging from the fleabag variety to the posh, all with no luck. Either they didn’t remember seeing Goodwin, or she was never there. Or, Mason thought, she used an alias, which he had no clue what it could be. If that were the case, his investigative nugget would turn into fool’s gold.

  The chase that started out with such strong motivation that morning waned into an annoying errand to check off a list. Mason questioned his value as an investigative reporter and pulled into the Vail Marriot Resort to continue the search. He remembered what one of his old editors had told him, “If it were easy, anybody could do it.” The mountain lodge style hotel was the perfect destination for a winter vacation he thought, but it looked out of place in the summer.

  It was getting late, and he had skipped over lunch. This could be his last stop. His stomach protested the idea as he smelled the food wafting in from the restaurant. There was a small line of guests at the desk, so he walked up to the bar, figuring he could grab a quick bite to satisfy the hunger pangs and wait out the line. The bartender took his order and sent it to the kitchen.

  “Something to drink?”

  “Just water, thanks.”

  “Sure thing.” The bartender used the station in front of Mason to fill the drink order.

  Mason took stock in his progress so far, which wasn’t much. Getting Goodwin identified as the woman at the house was a huge piece of the puzzle, which he was still withholding from Rankin, but it was only temporary. He wondered if Vanderhill had some kind of safe house in Vail where they were operating out of since he’d struck out at the hotels. He would head to the property appraiser’s office next to see if she had any rental properties in the area. They had to have set up camp somewhere; he just had to find out where.

  Although it felt like a cliché, Mason pulled out the picture of Rachel Goodwin from a small folder and laid it on the bar. He slid it to the bartender and asked if he’d seen her.

  “Why do you ask?” he questioned, guardedly.

  That was the first response he’d gotten other than, “No, nope, no sir, or sorry not here” all day. Mason looked at the bartender trying to read his eyes. He saw recognition. He thought about the question posed by the bartender and figured he had to handle this right and really sell the bullshit he was about to give.

  Mason smiled, “Look, I’m a private investigator. The chick’s old man hired me to see if she’s been stepping out, you know? Got some credit card receipts at the hotel here; just wanted to see if the allegations were true. Can you help me out?”

  The bartender relaxed just a bit. Mason figured the man had pegged him for a stalker ex-boyfriend or someone with ill intentions, so he went the PI route in the ruse just in case.

  “Well, maybe,” the bartender offered cryptically.

  As a journalist, he dug deep for the truth behind his stories, and sometimes that meant he had to grease the wheels on occasion. He smiled as he pulled out a twenty dollar bill. The bartender looked indifferent until Mason added a fifty.

  “Yeah, she was staying here a few days ago. As far as stepping out, I would say it was safe to assume so. Some guy in a trench coat was up at the bar with her. I saw both of them take off for her room at closing time night before last. Haven’t seen ’em since.”

  Mason slid the money across the bar and thanked the bartender, trying his be
st to hide his excitement. He excused himself and walked over to the front desk to further his pursuit. A young woman, dark-skinned with a bright, white smile greeted him.

  “Hello, I’m from Vanderhill Incorporated. I’m just following up a small internal audit within our company, verifying that the employees weren’t fudging their travel expense reports, and I just wanted to make sure they were kosher, that’s all.”

  The woman thought briefly about the request, and since they were past guests, he needed to provide the name and date. She was only allowed to verify the information as correct or not. It was slightly odd that they would send someone in person rather than check via email or over the phone.

  “Sure, what’s the name? I’ll check.”

  Mason gave Goodwin’s name and guessed that her check out date was the day of the shooting. He gave her the date as if it were fact, hoping he didn’t over sell it. He waited for the information while he nervously tapped the counter for the results.

  “Okay, I got her right here. All paid up.” The young woman recalled the dates Goodwin stayed there and added that it was a single occupancy room.

  “Okay, great. Thank you.”

  Mason felt validated but was hoping she would have shared a room with one of the other team members, overall, he was happy with the results. He’d found another link and had a solid base to build his story and bring the vigilante team out into the light. The idea of a book deal suddenly crossed his mind, but he would take one step at a time. He thought about asking the desk clerk about the man in the trench coat, for that’s all he knew about him, but he was worried she would see through his ploy and possibly call the authorities.