He pushed his way through the crowd and joined the staff behind the counter. He took the microphone connected to the public address system and turned it on.
The manager gave him a warning look. “Honey, you’re on your own here. I tried to warn you.”
“Did you at least call the cops like I asked?”
“Yeah.”
Ty raised the microphone to his mouth. The manager held her hands up in a gesture that she wanted no part of this, rushing off toward the back office and leaving Ty to deal with the situation. He had no problem with that. It was exactly what he intended to do.
“Excuse me, folks, but I need you to bear with us for a moment. We have a missing child and I need your help in locating her. Her name is Gretchen.”
While he was giving her physical description, Ty heard sirens approaching. Help was on the way.
5
Less than a minute after ending his speech over the intercom, Ty was speaking with two county deputies and a Virginia state trooper outside the store. They demanded the trucks blocking the exits be moved before they addressed the situation with the missing girl.
“You can’t hold these people prisoner,” an exasperated deputy said. “What the hell are you thinking?” He’d been bombarded by several dozen customers anxious to get on their way.
“I was securing the scene,” Ty said. “We at least need to get their information before we let these people go. We need to know who was here when it happened.”
“We don’t know that anything even happened yet,” the trooper said. “She could have just wandered off. That’s usually the case.”
Ty struggled to keep his cool. “Officer, we deal with lost kids on a regular basis but they’re always found in a few minutes. It’s been at least ten minutes now.”
“Did you lock things down as soon as the woman alerted you her child was missing?” the trooper asked.
Ty shook his head. “No, like I said, things like this happen and the kids always turn up. We searched for her first. We made an announcement over the intercom. I started to get concerned when we went past five minutes. There were cars coming and going that whole time.”
“We can let these people go ahead and leave,” the trooper instructed the deputies. “If you don’t mind, can one of you get a list of names and tag numbers in case we need to follow up with them in the future?”
One deputy headed off toward the main entrance, speaking to agitated customers as he went. He got the truck driver’s contact information first, then instructed him to move his rig out of the way. The truck driver was relieved to get going, tired of angry patrons threatening him.
“I’m going to speak to the mother,” the trooper told Ty. “Can you give the deputy here a statement?”
Ty pointed in Heather’s direction. “That’s the mother there. Her name is Heather Wells. Her daughter is Gretchen.”
Heather was sobbing into her phone, frantically gesturing as she explained to someone what had taken place. The second deputy moved closer to Ty, pulled up his sagging belt, then drew a notebook from his pocket.
“Are there more officers on the way?” Ty asked.
The deputy raised his eyes to Ty, then went back to jotting down the date in his notebook. “Why don’t you let us do the police work, Mr. Stone? There’s no call for us to bring in additional officers yet. Now tell me exactly where you were when you learned about the missing child.”
"I’ve been here since 0730 hours. I had just gone on my morning break, which is at 1000 hours."
There was a change in the deputy’s facial expression. It wasn’t quite a smirk but a look that implied of course you were on break. He jotted the information down. “That’s ten o’clock, right?”
The condescending implication that Ty hadn’t been doing his job made his blood run hot. He checked the deputy’s name badge. "You take breaks don't you, Deputy Puckett? You think crimes don't happen when you're on break? You think crime comes to a stop every time you pull into the fucking Krispy Kreme?"
The deputy raised his eyes from his notebook, surprised at Ty’s vitriol. "Was that necessary? We’re trying to find a missing girl here. What I don’t need is any more of your attitude."
Ty struggled to rein in his impatience. "I know exactly what we’re trying to do here. I was doing it before you showed up. Let’s get back to doing it and quit bullshitting about it. You’re wasting time."
Deputy Puckett gave Ty a warning look. “I don’t appreciate your language. If you think we’re wasting time, what would Mr. Security Guard suggest the real cops do differently?"
“I would suggest the real cops get more men out here.”
“Are you done with the attitude?”
Ty didn’t respond, giving the deputy a hardnosed stare.
The state trooper interrupted their standoff. Heather Wells was sobbing in the background. The trooper had seated her in his car, the door open. “Deputy, do you all have a female deputy or a victim’s assistance officer who might be able to help out with her? She’s in a bad place. She doesn’t have family close and she’s going to need someone.”
Deputy Puckett clicked the mic at his collar, leaned toward it, and relayed the trooper’s request to the dispatcher.
“Do you have access to the security camera footage or is that archived at the corporate level?" the trooper asked Ty.
"I can access it here but it's backed up at the corporate office over the network."
The trooper gestured at the deputy. “Can you keep an eye on the mother while we check out the video?”
Deputy Puckett agreed but pulled the trooper aside for a moment. Ty had no idea what was being said but assumed it was something about his attitude. If they didn’t start looking for this girl, his attitude was only going to get worse. The deputy was the one with the attitude as far as Ty was concerned. In his experience, everybody got pissed on by somebody. The FBI pissed on state troopers, troopers pissed on deputies, deputies pissed on small town cops. All of them pissed on security guards.
“Come on,” the trooper said when he was done, leading Ty toward the store.
The truck stop had its own tiny server room housing all the electronics required to operate the complex facility. Credit card processing, point of sale equipment, inventory management, and Wi-Fi all ran out of the room. A table held a workstation and monitor. Sitting down in two folding chairs, Ty and the trooper ran the video back to the point where the mother parked at the gas pumps with her child. The mother fueled the vehicle and then it appeared that both needed to use the restroom so they headed inside, where they encountered the long line that had built up due to the softball team and their families.
The two got separated waiting to get in. The mother allowed her daughter to go into the restroom first and, as a result, the child was out before her mother. Heather stated that she instructed her daughter to wait on her outside the restroom, but the child had not obeyed. The security footage showed her wandering the aisles looking at candy and toys. In one view the girl made it to the front of the store and stood there looking around, presumably waiting on her mother.
Out of nowhere, a broad smile crossed Gretchen’s face. She stood up on her toes and flapped her hands with excitement. She could barely contain her glee and skipped toward the door with no sign of hesitation.
"Can we see where she went? Is there a view of that?" the trooper asked.
"Yeah, there's a lot of views. It may take a second to figure out which number camera corresponds to which view. I don’t have to access this very often. Usually we’re just dealing with shoplifting so I’m accessing inside footage."
Ty clicked the mouse around the interface, eventually changing camera views and rewinding to the appropriate timestamp. It turned out to be incredibly difficult to pick the small child out in the various outside views. The shots were all wide angle, attempting to capture the most area possible with a single camera. While that made sense for the company because it saved on the number of cameras required to c
over a given area, it rendered the images nearly useless. They were grainy and distorted.
The footage was color, but not streaming real-time. It was more like a series of rapid snapshots taken every couple of seconds. The child was there and then she was a foot away, then a foot further away. This too was a cost-saving measure. A lower frame-rate required less storage capacity than recording full-motion videos. Data storage wasn’t such a big deal for a small facility with a half-dozen cameras but this place had sixty cameras. The Petro Panda chain itself had hundreds of truck stops with thousands of cameras. At a corporate level that meant a lot of storage was required and storage cost money.
“My God,” the trooper said, “there’s kids everywhere. What color shirt was she supposed to be wearing?”
“Blue,” Ty replied. “Same color as—”
“The softball team’s shirts,” the trooper finished.
It was true. The footage showed kids everywhere, most wearing blue shirts. With the low image quality, one blue-shirted child didn’t look a whole lot different than the next. They changed views and found the bus from the softball team blocked the camera view to the front of the store. That one might have been helpful. Other views showed kids clustered everywhere taking selfies, group shots, and horse playing. Families and parents were mingling among the kids. The players were constantly running on and off the bus, scurrying around like ants.
“It’s chaos,” the trooper mumbled.
Ty could only nod in agreement.
Fifteen frustrated minutes later they agreed that those few seconds of Gretchen heading toward the door with a broad grin on her face were the last images of her the cameras had captured. That particular camera was intended to capture a clear image if anyone robbed the store. It produced a high resolution picture that could be distributed to the news or law enforcement. None of the other cameras had a clear view of the child after she separated from her mother, nor did they have the resolution to zoom in and closely study the image. Collectively, it wasn’t much.
"Can you print those screenshots?" the trooper asked.
Ty clicked a few onscreen buttons and the color images sputtered from a nearby inkjet printer. When the first one dropped into the tray, the trooper snapped a picture of it with his phone and texted it out to someone.
"Are you issuing an Amber Alert?" Ty asked.
"Not at this time. We don't have enough information for that. We don't even know if she's in a vehicle. It’ll just go out as a missing child report for now. I’ve got detectives showing up any moment, though.
"It's probably too late," Ty said. "If someone snatched her, she’s gone. They wouldn’t stick around.”
"What makes you so sure of that?"
"I served in Special Forces when I was in the Army. That's how they trained us to do it. Snatch and grab. Use chaos to your advantage. Don’t stick around."
6
Within two hours the Petro Panda had blossomed into the epicenter of a missing child investigation. The Virginia State Police brought in an RV fully outfitted to serve as a mobile command center, and pop-up awnings were erected along one side of the parking lot to shelter investigators from the heat.
The sheriff’s department brought in a tracking dog and Gretchen’s mother had provided them with an item of clothing for scent tracking. The dog handler appeared hopeful but Ty held little hope for this approach. With thousands of people going in and out, there was no way the scent of that one child was not corrupted. Despite that, the dog handler jogged behind his bloodhound as it wandered around the massive parking lot trying to do its job.
Local television news crew filmed this with great interest. They were constantly struggling to find dramatic stories and they’d hit the jackpot today. While he thought their approach a little sleazy, Ty understood the importance of their cooperation. Getting Gretchen’s picture out on the news was critical. They needed millions of people to recognize her face if they saw it.
The local search and rescue unit had shown up and was combing the surrounding area. Tyler understood they wanted to help but he thought this too was a wasted effort. There simply hadn’t been enough time for Gretchen to get very far before they started looking for her. If she’d been wandering around the fringes of the parking lot or walking away from the truck stop someone would have spotted her. Everyone would have heard the announcements about a missing kid.
Ty’s replacement was called to come in early so Ty would be available to assist the investigators. He spent a lot of time beneath one of the pop-up tents giving the same statement over and over again. He was getting frustrated and ready to go home when a tall, whip thin lady in her late fifties approached him. She wore a badge on a lanyard around her neck and extended a hand toward Ty.
“Mr. Stone, I’m Lieutenant Whitt with the Virginia State Police. I’m an investigator assigned to this case.”
Ty shook her hand.
“I understand you caught a little grief about locking down this scene?”
Ty nodded. “There were a lot of pissed off people but they calmed down once I had a chance to explain the situation to them. Well, most of them did.”
“That’s okay,” said the lieutenant. “Managing a crime scene sometimes inconveniences people. The public just has to deal with it.”
“I wish I’d thought to do it sooner.”
“Don’t beat yourself up over it. You had no reason to think it was anything other than a kid who’d wandered off from a parent. You kept a cool head in a tough situation. Where’d you learn to handle a crowd like that?”
“Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“What branch?”
“Army.”
“Thank you for your service, Mr. Stone. I retired from the Marine Corps myself. I was a drill sergeant at Parris Island. I find myself bossing folks around on a regular basis. It’s hard to leave that life behind us sometimes.”
Tyler smiled at that. He could imagine the hard-earned demeanor of a drill sergeant didn’t go away magically upon retirement. “I’m glad to help in any way I can, but I’m ready to get out of here. It’s been an incredibly stressful day and I’m beat. How much longer do I need to stick around?”
The lieutenant rocked back on her heels and shoved her hands in her pockets. “There’s no reason you can’t go, Mr. Stone. We have your statement and your contact information. If we need anything else from you we can find you.”
Ty got to his feet. “Thank you. I hope you find her as soon as possible.”
Lieutenant Whitt removed a business card from her pocket and extended it to Ty. “If you think of anything else, please contact me.”
Ty slipped the card into the pocket of his uniform shirt. “I’ll do that.”
“One more thing, Mr. Stone. Despite pissing a few people off, you handled yourself pretty well. Have you ever considered a career in law enforcement?”
“I’ve considered it.” It was on the tip of his tongue to mention he had some personal issues he wanted to work out first but he let it go. She didn’t need to know that. She might ask the nature of his personal issues and he didn’t want to go into it. Then again, being military, she might understand.
“Well, you might think about it. Sometimes that military experience is a good match for a law enforcement career.”
Ty thanked the lieutenant, shook her hand, and went on his way. He was tempted to speak to Heather before he left, to wish her luck in the search for her daughter, but she was being interviewed by another news crew, offering a tearful plea that anyone who knew the whereabouts of her daughter should come forward. Ty went on to his truck. She probably didn’t want to see him anyway. As far as he was concerned, he’d failed her and her daughter.
7
Ty got in his truck and experienced a wave of relief. Even though he hadn’t pulled out yet, simply being in familiar space, in the safety of his truck, produced an immediate, comforting effect. He started the engine, then plugged his cell phone into the charger, noticing he had several missed calls f
rom his sister. He was too emotionally drained to call her back at the moment. He assumed she must have heard about the missing girl and was checking in to see if he had any information.
Despite being exhausted, he desperately needed to wind down so he headed for the gym. Besides the shooting range, it was the only place he ever went on a regular basis. It was a reflection of his military career. Work, gym, and train. It had become so ingrained in him that, even now, as a nobody, he couldn’t put it behind him. His routine was all that kept him grounded.
He drove straight to the gym and whipped his truck into a parking place. He unlocked the door, grabbed his gym bag, and was starting to get out when it hit him. Where was his paranoia? Where was the hyper-awareness of his surroundings?
This was the first drive in a long time where he had not constantly monitored his mirrors. Usually his anxiety rose slowly over the course of his drive. When he’d reached the gym this time, he simply parked like anyone else.
Like a normal person.
He didn’t circle the parking lot to check out the other vehicles, hadn’t watched to see if he’d been followed. He’d even opened his door with no regard for who might be out there in the parking lot. That never happened.
Rather than being upset at his own lack of situational awareness, Ty was intrigued by his lack of symptoms. He was aware paranoia was a byproduct of the anxiety, which was a byproduct of the PTSD. He wondered if it was the exhaustion after the long day. Perhaps he was distracted by his concern for the missing girl. It showed how much his symptoms were a part of him that their absence was so noticeable.
His phone, sitting in the cup holder, rang. The noise startled him. He reached inside, tipped the phone in his direction, and saw it was his sister. Unlike most people these days, he never took his phone into the gym. He had no interest in taking pictures of himself posing in front of the mirror.
Hard Trauma Page 5
