The Longest Winter

by Harrison Drake

  “There’s still one thing we haven’t charged you with, something rare in situations like these.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Sex offences.”

  Max swallowed hard and sat upright. “I never touched them.”

  “I know you didn’t. Claude told me. Remember, the one who got away? The one who just came in to tell me a little more about you.”

  “I’m not listening to your lies.”

  I thought I heard Kara whisper “psycho” but I couldn’t be certain. Luckily Max didn’t seem to hear anything.

  “He told me you never touched them, but you did try. Stripped the kids naked and scared the hell out of them. But then you started punching yourself in the head and then you used a knife to cut yourself.”

  Max didn’t speak; he just stared at me.

  “Explains all the cuts you’ve got on you. Kara showed me the pictures from when you were booked in.”

  “It helps. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “You were screaming as you did it. About how you’re not like him, and how you’re not a monster.” I stared back at him, my eyes boring into his. “I disagree.”

  “I never touched them. Not like he did to us.”

  Us. That single word struck me harder than I’d expected. My mind raced and images flashed in front of me. I tried to flip through them, tried to focus on a single image. Then I saw it. I had been looking for cases of child abductions that had happened around the same time as mine, almost thirty years ago, to see if my abductor may have been responsible for others. I remembered reading about one in Belgium around that time but set it aside due to the location and lack of similarities to my own case.

  What had struck me then was that the abducted boys were brothers.

  “Us?”

  “What?”

  “You said ‘us’ just now.”

  Max shook his head. I took out my cellphone and searched for the article, finding it a few minutes later.

  “Look, Lars, let’s cut the bullshit.”

  “Who is Lars?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me. Lars Joossens. You and your older brother Mats were abducted as children, just like you’re abducting these boys. Except your abductor had tendencies you don’t. The two of you were abused, physically and sexually, before he gave you a bowl of ice cream laced with sedatives.”

  Max was shaking his head repeatedly. “No, no, no…”

  “Mats knew something was wrong and he wouldn’t let you finish yours, would he? He ate it as well. Because of that, you survived - but he didn’t. Your captor thought you were dead and dumped you both in a ditch at the side of a rural road.”

  “Please don’t. No more.”

  “You wanted to die with him, you couldn’t bear to live on without your brother. That’s why you’re doing this, bringing siblings together in some fucked up way. You force them to bond before you kill them.”

  “It’s not like that,” Max said, his voice getting louder.

  “It is. There’s no other explanation. You’re taking out your past on them. You’re parents blamed you for Mats dying, didn’t they?”

  Max nodded. “They said if I’d eaten mine maybe we both could’ve lived. They went crazy with the guilt and I was the only one they could take it out on.”

  “Right, your abductor killed himself when he found out you were still alive. So you ended up in hospital, depressed and suicidal, and your parents told you to never come back.”

  “He threatened to kill me if he ever saw me again.”

  “Your father. Nice man. You were probably better off without him then. So you changed your name, got a judge to seal the record out of fear of your family finding you again. That’s why we have no record of you before you turned sixteen.”

  Max nodded again, tears streaming from his eyes.

  “Why did you take his last name? After everything he did to you?”

  “I figured my parents would never think of it. And Max, well, it’s close to Mats.”

  I smiled. “I think he would’ve liked that. But, Peeters? I think you idolized him somewhat, even after everything.”

  “He brought us together, if only for a little while.”

  “You didn’t have a great relationship growing up?”

  “It was alright. Typical of kids. But when we were there, locked up, we had no one but each other.”

  “Do you really think you would have been better off dead?”

  “Of course I do,” Max said. “None of this would’ve happened.”

  “Then stop it now before other people die.”

  “I… I can’t.”

  I stood up and slammed my fists down on the table. “You can, you’re just too fucking weak to do it. Just like you were too weak to save your brother.”

  Max stood up and stared at me, his fists clenched above the table. “There was nothing I could do.”

  “And yet Claude escaped and got help. Why didn’t you?”

  He struck the table. “He didn’t escape!”

  “I have video surveillance of him in this department today talking to my partner. Do I need to show it to you to make you realize you’re delusional? Think long and hard about it. You took another boy in his place and you know it.”

  Max clutched his head with both hands then started to hit himself. I moved around the table to restrain him but he stopped. “It’s really not him, is it?”

  I shook my head. “No, Max, it’s not.”

  He paused for a minute and I could see him thinking. Just as he was about to speak Sophie burst into the room waving a stack of papers.

  “I have the address,” she shouted.

  I turned to look at her. “Where is it?”

  She read it out to me. “It’s about eight kilometres from where he was arrested.”

  I turned and looked at him. “Is that right, Max?”

  Max slumped back down into his chair. “It is, but they’re probably already dead.”

  “You’d better start praying that they aren’t.”

  * * *

  The lights and sirens kept traffic off to the side as we drove south toward our destination. Our vehicle was equipped with lights, but it was an unmarked detective’s car, so we had two cruisers taking up the front and back. The traffic parted in front of us and we drove on. We had an ambulance meeting us there as well, but it was taking a different route coming from a detachment not far from the address.

  Yuri drove as he knew the area the best, I took the passenger seat and Sophie and Kara sat in the back. It wasn’t chauvinism, it was tactical. We still didn’t know what to expect, and we always kept the ‘plus one’ rule in mind. Even when you’ve got the bad guy, assume there’s one more. Focus all your attention on the person you arrested and next thing you know you’ll be jumped from behind by his buddy who was hiding in the shadows.

  We had no reason to suspect a second person, but we were prepared. Kara was injured and Sophie lacked in experience. I had, for better or worse, been involved in enough life-or-death situations that I made the better choice for the front line.

  I really hoped for the best-case scenario with this one.

  I turned around to face Sophie. “So how did you find the address?”

  “Facebook.”

  “Really?”

  “I got Hugo Krier, David’s dad, to give me access to his account and searched for the people who had last viewed it. Max wasn’t one of them, but we already knew that. So I started going through other accounts and found one that seemed… well, just not right.”

  “How so?”

  “It was a teenage girl’s account. But it was so stereotypically teenage girl that it just didn’t sit right. I thought maybe Max was using it to lure young boys
. I checked the message history but there was nothing and none of the posts jumped out at me. But every liked page or group was a boy band or a clothing store or a movie star or something. So I dug deeper. I had sent warrants to the internet service providers and everything but no one was getting back to me fast enough, so I called and told them it was exigent circumstances and they still fought me. Once I told them it was about the two missing boys they coughed it up.”

  “A lot of those companies can be difficult to deal with.”

  Sophie laughed. “That’s an understatement. Anyway, I wish I’d thought of this sooner.”

  “I wish I had too,” Kara said.

  I was still confused. “So you got the address from the internet provider? How did you know it was the right one? You seemed pretty damned certain when you busted into the interview room.”

  “I got the address and ran it through our system. We had a report from a break-in from a few years ago with an elderly complainant. The remarks field on his entry noted that he is completely deaf. I came in to talk to Chen and let him know what I found when I heard Max telling you about killing the deaf homeowner. That sealed it. I waited a bit because I didn’t want to interrupt. I was hoping he’d tell you first, just to be certain.”

  “Nice work.”

  I thought I saw her blush. “Thank you.”

  “We’ll have to make sure your superiors hear about this one. You may have just saved two lives.”

  She didn’t speak again, just smiled and resumed looking bashful.

  It was a long drive, even in emergency response mode, and when we finally pulled up in front of the house our hearts were racing. Yuri took the lead and used his size and strength to make splinters out of the front door frame with a single kick. He and I went in first, guns drawn, and started clearing the main floor.

  It didn’t take us long to find the homeowner dead in his chair. A glass lay broken on the hardwood floor beside him. He had dropped it when the table was only a few inches further. There were no outward signs of trauma and it was enough for me to decide he had probably been killed the same way the previous boys had been: an overdose of Propofol delivered orally. Max had been nice enough to get the poor old man his drink. I bowed my head for just a moment and at least tried to find some solace in the fact that his death would have been quick and painless.

  We left the body where it was and didn’t approach it. Decomposition had begun – we had smelled it the moment we entered – and it was obvious that he was deceased. There was nothing we could do for him. Visual confirmation was enough in this case; there was no need to check for signs of life.

  We cleared the rest of the main floor and Sophie took up position at the base of the stairs leading to the second floor. She had her gun drawn and held the point while Kara watched the front door. Yuri and I went into the basement to make sure no one would surprise us from behind as we made our way to the second floor where the boys were. There was nothing in the basement besides the heating equipment and ductwork – and a lot of dust and cobwebs. We returned upstairs and I fought the compulsive urge to keep brushing at my head and shoulders, the feeling of cobwebs on me was something I couldn’t shake. Sirens sounded from outside and through the window I could see the ambulance pulling up. The officers outside would deal with them, telling them to hold back until it was clear.

  Yuri and I moved past Sophie and went upstairs to find a door at the top of the stairs that was locked with a deadbolt. There was a small landing before the door, just enough room for Yuri to wind up and loose another kick with one of his enormous boots.

  The doorframe splintered once more and the door swung in hard before bouncing off of the wall behind it. Just a few feet away, sitting on the couch in front of the TV with a plate of chicken wings and French fries and a few empty soda cans on the coffee table, were two terrified-looking young boys.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “We’re police officers.” I holstered my gun and fished my badge out of my pocket. They both seemed to relax right away. They sat there staring at us for a moment, taking deep but hurried breaths, before they leapt off of the couch and ran toward us. Yuri and I each found ourselves the recipients of one of the biggest hugs we had ever received, a hug complete with tear-soaked faces and sauce-covered hands. I looked up at Yuri and thought I saw a tear in his eye.

  “You boys are safe now.” I looked at the boy who was clinging to me and saw enough of a resemblance to know who it was. “Jacques, Claude is waiting for you.”

  He looked up at me with the widest smile I had ever seen then started to cry again. “He saved me, didn’t he?”

  “He did. If it wasn’t for him, we may never have found you boys. But you helped him escape, Jacques.”

  He nodded but I could feel him shaking his head as he cried.

  “How did you boys get out?” Yuri said.

  “I’ll show you,” said David. He wiped his eyes and nose with the back of his hand leaving a mess of mucus on one side and wing sauce on the other. They led us into the room that they had been trapped in, one complete with barred windows, ropes and buckets that had served as bathrooms. I hated imagining what those boys had been through and it reminded me that even though Kat’s imprisonment was longer, the conditions she had been forced to live in were easier. Not that it made it any better, of course, but I saw the strength in those two boys and I had never been so proud of someone else’s children. They were smart, strong, and calm under pressure. Calm enough to sit and have a meal and something to drink while they waited for their rescue.

  “Jacques used a belt buckle to get this piece of wood up and then we used it to cut through the rope.” David went on and on regaling us with the details of their escape, from cutting through the ropes to breaking through the walls. They had broken the window and screamed until they couldn’t scream anymore, but no one heard them. The house was too far removed from the rest of the world.

  “We heard the sirens when you got here,” Jacques said. “But we weren’t sure what to do. So we just waited.”

  There came a knock at the door behind us and I turned around to see Kara standing with the paramedics. “We should get these boys to the hospital,” Kara said. I nodded and moved out of the way to let the medics in.

  They started checking the boys over and dressed their wounds. Jacques had more injuries, both from taking the beatings for Claude and David and from their escape. He looked awful, a mess of cuts and bruises, but the smile on his face was unmistakable. He was going home and he knew it. Everything he had been through, every scar he would have to bear, they didn’t matter anymore. He was free and he would be seeing his brother again.

  David on the other hand looked confused. I could see the joy in his eyes but there was concern in his face that seemed to amplify when he looked at Jacques. It was fear, I realized, fear that the bond they had formed was broken. It hadn’t been long, but I was sure that David had come to see Jacques as a friend or even as a brother and now, as happy as he was to be returning home, there was a feeling of loss as well.

  “Try to get these guys rooms next door to each other in the hospital, if you can,” I said, hoping the paramedics spoke English.

  “Oui,” one said and gave a nod. It was enough for me.

  David seemed to perk up a little with that. “We’ll need to talk to their parents about letting the boys visit each other,” I said to Kara, just above a whisper. “I think David is going to need it.”

  “Yeah, it’ll be harder on him.” Kara took out her phone. “I’m going to step out and call Jacques’s parents. I’ll get Yuri to call David’s… I never met them.”

  “No?”

  “Nope. Too busy being trapped in an upside-down car covered in snow.”

  I smiled. “Right, forgot about that.”

  “I can jog your memory if you’d like.” She held up her ca
sted arm.

  “And risk wrecking the cast? You’d have to get Yuri to sign it again. Maybe put a little heart over the ‘i’ the second time around?”

  Kara blushed and confirmed my suspicions. “You’re really tempting me to hit you.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m happy for you.”

  “Nothing’s happened. Not yet, anyway. He just brought it up today. I told him when this was all over we could grab coffee or something.”

  “He seems like a good guy. Quiet though.”

  “He is, but a lot of it makes sense now.”

  “How so?”

  “I’ll let Kat fill you in on that one,” Kara said. She smiled as a look of pure confusion crossed my face. “It’s all good, don’t worry. Let’s just say he has a pretty good idea of what Kat has gone through.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah. I just found out today.”

  I looked over and saw the paramedics getting the boys ready to head out. “All done?” I said.

  Jacques nodded. “Are our parents going to be at the hospital?”

  “They will be soon,” I said. Kara slipped out ahead of them with her phone in her hand.

  “Thank you for finding us,” Jacques said as he hugged me again. He walked out and David came up next, hugging me as well. He didn’t say anything, he just looked into my eyes and gave me a smile that could melt the coldest heart. I smiled back then watched them both walk out the door, their heads held high.

  They were survivors.

  Chapter Forty

  Laughter filled the room as the wine bottles made their way around the table and the courses of food kept coming. We had rented a room in a Chinese restaurant, a private room far from the prying eyes and ears of the other patrons. It gave us room to talk, and it gave Kat room to breathe.

  “You pushed her in the water on your first case together?” Yuri said, smiling.