Secrets Boxset: A Riveting Kidnapping Mystery Collection

by J. S. Donovan

  With every passing film, Anna found it easier to focus on the details hidden in the background, almost as if she were playing the world’s worst I-Spy game. Still, nothing seemed to betray any hints to what happened to Keisha Rines. After all, the most recent tape had been filmed three years before the child pianist was born.

  Time dragged as she viewed tape after tape after tape, slowly emptying the deep file box as the sun fell away. Legs outstretched across the carpet floor and eyes lifeless, she put in the sixth tape and clicked the top of her pen. The cycle repeated. Halfway through, she paused the film and crawled, hands and knees, to the screen. She squinted at the low-resolution image. A blob-like shadow lingered at the outer corner of the frame. She took note of the timestamp and pressed play. The shadow moved slightly. It could’ve been the work of the granular bars scrolling down the screen, but...

  Anna turned page after page on her legal pad. The tape dated a year before the last one she viewed. The closest object in that quadrant of the screen happened to an antique dining chair. It would be impossible to cast a shadow of that shape. Anna made note of it and continued the film. The grainy video quality disjointed the shadow, causing the illusion of movement. The tape ended and the screen turned blue. Anna rubbed her chin and grabbed another tape from the box.

  The next film didn’t have the shadow nor the one after. However, it appeared again in the third film, this time on the opposite side of the frame. Once again, no accounted-for object had been placed in that area. Opening her laptop, Anna launched the audio software her friend Allen from Miami got her. “It’s perfect for your P.I. work,” her sketchy, tech-savvy friend explained. “It will pick up all the juicy secrets from those questionable spouses you’ll be forced to stalk.” If only her job was that easy.

  Anna ran the VHS audio through the software on her laptop and studied the waves. It wouldn’t be perfect, but hopefully it would pick up any sound fluctuations outside the noises of Strife and the victim. About the time when the shadow moved, a sharp mountain appeared in the audio track. Anna enhanced the volume. She listened closely. A cough or random background noise? She played it again, indecisive.

  Grabbing the next tape, Anna shoved it into the player. No shadow and no other noise. Two hours gone. She put in the final tape. More wasted time. The box lay empty next to three stacks of VHS tapes. One video sat away from the others. She squeezed her injured hand tightly until she couldn’t bear the pain. I have to make sure, she told herself. Carefully, she grabbed the sacred cartridge with the name Anna on it and put it into the player.

  “Sorry Mom, sorry Dad,” she mumbled and undid her hypnotherapy.

  The fourteen-year-old fought, struggled, but didn’t win. In the end, Strife walked away with a black eye. Anna paused the tape, studied the amber liquid in the bottle, and took a hearty swig of scotch. Gasping, she wiped her mouth with the top of her hand and returned her red, veiny eyes to the TV. She watched herself lose and cry for help. Brief flashes of the buried past burst alive in her psyche. She pinched her temples and contemplated unloading her pistol into the screen. If she could only rewind time, run into the basement, and save herself. She had the same thoughts when viewing the other tapes, but seeing herself made it somehow much more real.

  She turned away from the heinous act and noticed the toe of a boot poking into the frame. She pressed pause three times before the picture stopped, with naked Strife walking out of the frame and boot stepping forward in the other. A moment after resuming the video, it ended.

  Anna’s heart bashed against her ribs, ready to burst at any moment. Her hands trembled as goose bumps speckled her skin. The room spun. She grabbed ahold of the desk and gulped down her returning lunch. Her thumb pressed rewind on the remote. Her defeat played out in reverse and then in real time and somehow became more devastating in its second viewing. She attempted to focus on what point the boot appeared in the frame, but her eyes trailed to Strife as the victim’s bloodcurdling screams filled her ears. She muted the volume and covered the center of the screen with the palm of her hand. Eyeing the corners of the image, she caught a shadow pace from one end of the room to the other.

  Pause. Rewind. Play.

  She got closer to the screen and to her bruised hand shielding the twenty-year-old horror. With a click of a button, she froze the past. Slowly, she lifted her hand away from the curved screen. A reflection bounced off the picture of the riverside lodge hanging on a valve. Overlapping the humble building was the reflection of a blurred man wearing a ball cap. The out-of-focus text above the bill read grebniL.

  In big letters, Anna penned the word on the legal pad in its proper sequence. Linberg, Lemdart, or some variation. She checked the time. Nearly 11 pm. She ejected the tape and felt it in both hands. Anger boiled inside. The tape bent in her tight grasp. Plastic whined and started cracking. Anna stopped herself before it broke and placed it on the stack with the others. Using the desk as her support, she pulled herself from the floor. Her legs bowed in. She steadied herself and grabbed her coat and bottle, then drove back to her father’s house. The light was on in the living room, and she braced herself before opening the door.

  Saying nothing, Anna walked past her father, who sat up in his recliner when she entered the house. His concerned gaze followed her to the hall.

  Trembling, Anna discarded her clothes on the bathroom floor and turned on the shower. The hot water splashed against her skin like lava and filled the room with steam. Eyes closed, Anna gulped down the scotch as the scalding shower streamed down her hair and face. She let her jelly-like knees give way, sinking to the bottom of the bathtub. She pressed the bottle close to her lips as tears mixed with cascading water. No matter how much soap she used, nothing made her clean.

  After she put on her pajamas, she shambled out of the dark hallway and into the living room. Richard lowered the volume on the television and the classic Wild West movie it displayed. He pulled himself from his seat, a father’s sympathy on his face. “Oh, Anna.”

  Anna folded into her father’s arms. “I saw what he did to me. He wasn’t alone.”

  “It’s okay,” Richard whispered. “It’s all going to be okay.”

  When she thought she had finished crying, the waterworks began again. They wept together as the world of cowboys and Indians erupted with gunfire.

  After a sleepless night, eggs, and the blackest coffee Anna could make, she crawled back into her truck. Grace and Evan watched her from the doorway, as sleepless as herself. None of them said so much as a murmur.

  Anna headed to the Crawford County detention center, once again before visiting hours. Her breathing calm and eyes calculating, she pulled into the parking lot. She remembered yesterday’s fear and rage. Now, only anger remained, and it burned in her being like a blazing furnace. Without hesitation, she opened the door and headed inside. She stomped through the hall, halting before the supervisor, who pulled the just-opened energy drink from his lips.

  “I need five minutes with Strife,” Anna told the supervisor. “It’s time-sensitive.”

  A heavy frown covered the man’s face and wooly mustache. “That won’t be possible.”

  “I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation,” Anna fought against her anger.

  “You don’t understand,” the supervisor replied. “He was attacked in his cell last night.”

  Anna collected her thoughts. With dammed-up frustration, she spoke. “Is he...?”

  “He didn’t make it through the night,” the supervisor admitted guiltily. “For what it's worth, I can show you his cell.”

  The supervisor led her down the cell block. Catcalls and whistles sounded as she passed by caged men. They were silenced by the supervisor’s gruff commands. Eventually, Anna stopped in the threshold of the small cell. Blood spatter hung to white walls and pooled on the glossy floor. By the pattern, it was a violent struggle. I thought I left this behind in Miami. Anna stepped over the crimson puddle as she slid on a plastic glove.

&
nbsp; “Toothbrush,” the supervisor explained. “The other inmate must’ve traded for it or sharpened the handle on his bedframe.”

  Anna looked over Strife’s unkempt bed and shoved her gloved hand in between the mattress and the frame. Nothing. “Did you have a guard outside?”

  “He got preoccupied with a dispute down the hall. Strife’s bunkmate, a two-bit meth head, used the three or four minutes to make a statement.”

  “Killed a pedo, earn brownie points.” Anna was far too familiar with it in Miami.

  “Exactly. Usually they just give ‘em a good whooping. This, though… this was brutal. I’m not saying the man didn’t have it coming, but...” the supervisor's voice trailed off as he studied the blood.

  Anna checked around the toilet and inside nooks of the room, finding a slip of paper crunched between the bed and wall. Cautiously, Anna unraveled it and read the contents within.

  “There was this guy who’d come by every few years,” the paper began. “Sometimes he’d bring a girl and other times he’d come alone. We never traded names. With our shared interests, stuff like that could end us. I could always count on him to watch. And to take care of the bodies. No matter how much time we shared, there was always something about him that made my skin crawl. I blamed it on his casual demeanor and,” the note ended abruptly.

  “What is it?” the supervisor asked.

  Fishing out her phone, Anna took a picture of the crumpled paper. “A memoir or a confession. Hard to tell. Either way, it’s not complete.” She folded it up and surrendered it to the supervisor. After thanking him for his time, Anna left the blood-soaked cell.

  She drove in silence. The monster was dead, yet she felt defeated. Her thoughts spun around the mysterious man in the video. Was he Cain or some other foul creature? If he took care of the victim’s bodies, why let Anna escape? She remembered vaguely slipping her binds and escaping the basement all those years ago, but that could've been a fiction she conjured to make sense of the situation. The tapes didn’t awaken as much as she thought. Strife had all the answers she needed, and he died with them. So much for resourcefulness, huh, Strife? Her blood boiled.

  The phone rang. Anna answered. Greenbell’s voice was sober and angry. “We’ve got another one.”

  Anna swerved the truck around the nearest intersection and punched the gas.

  The flagpole jutted from the circular grass patch in the center of the roundabout. Police cruisers parked around the bend nearby. The plump and quirky Principal Darlyn Axel stood on the steps leading up to Hikers Middle School. Mascara smeared her tear-stained face as an officer questioned her.

  Putting on her aviator sunglasses, Anna stepped onto the roundabout. Greenbell gave one of his guys the OK to let her near the flag post. Agent Rennard squatted at the foot of the metal pole, observing the red velvet ring box.

  The FBI agent stood as Anna walked across the grass still wet with morning dew. She didn’t need to ask what they had, only who it belonged to.

  “Lily…” Rennard replied. “The ring finger.”

  “But this time he wasn’t proposing,” Anna said dreadfully as she studied the cleanly cut appendage resting in the small box. Nausea took over. This guy can’t keep getting away with this. She could imagine her niece as the blade dropped. Anna’s fists balled up and her face filled with red anger.

  Rennard looked out at the brick school house and the approaching news vans. “This is a publicity stunt. One that will make national news. Once it’s revealed that he has a connection to dozens of other abductions, he’ll be a legend.”

  “And so will those who catch him.” the sheriff injected, masking a subtle smirk hidden between his white mustache and trimmed, spade-shaped beard.

  “Hopefully the school cameras did our job for us,” Anna said as she steadied her breathing.

  “My boys are looking into it,” Greenbell stated.

  Anna scanned the surrounding area. Like the rest of the “gift” sites, the flag post area was spotless. “What about Keisha? Anything found of her?”

  “Not a word,” Agent Rennard replied.

  Anna opened and closed her sore hand. “I don’t know if I should be happy about that. Oh, and I’m sure you heard, but Edger Strife is dead. Murdered by his cellmate.”

  The sheriff nodded. “I learned after I called you over.”

  “Where does that leave us?” Rennard asked.

  “Nowhere. That’s the problem.” Anna told them about her findings on the VHS tapes. The two men didn’t say a word, and pity kept them from making eye contact.

  “We’ll have to bring your brother back in,” Greenbell eventually stated as the forensic team gathered up the ring box.

  “Evan isn’t Cain,” Anna protested. “He would’ve been ten years old when that video was shot.”

  “I’m only covering the bases,” Greenbell defended himself.

  Anna shoved her finger at him. “You leave my brother out of this.”

  “I don’t trust him. All of this started after he came back to town,” Greenbell said.

  Officer Ashburn, a meaty man with spiked white hair, led the three of them into the school principal’s office where last night's security footage was being displayed on a rollaway TV. Around 4 am, a blue two-door Mitsubishi rolled to a stop at the roundabout.

  Fingers curled around the back of her seat, Anna traded glances with Rennard. A man, medium height and wearing a white t-shirt, jeans, and a ski mask stepped out of the running car’s driver side door. Ring box in hand, he approached the flag post, looked both ways, and gently placed his “gift.”

  “Show us your face,” Anna mumbled.

  As if the figure heard her request, he tilted his head up to the camera and locked eyes with Anna through the television screen. She felt her skin crawl. The man didn’t move, didn’t blink for thirty seconds. He turned back to his car and slowly reversed, careful to conceal the license plate number.

  “I want to know who owns that car,” Greenbell commanded an officer. “What are you looking at me for, go!”

  The police officer ran out of the room.

  Greenbell smiled at Rennard. “This cocky SOB just made his first and last mistake.”

  “We are looking at hundreds of Mitsubishis,” Rennard stated as they moved out of the room. “We haven’t won.”

  “Start with stolen ones,” Anna suggested, keeping pace. “He wouldn’t be dumb enough to use his own car. If we split the list three ways, it will be quick work.”

  “He could be armed and dangerous,” Greenbell said. “Rennard and I will divide the list and pursue our leads. Keep doing what you were doing. We’ll take care of this, like the FBI and Sheriff’s department are supposed to.”

  Before Anna could reply, the two of them were out the door. Rennard gave her an “I’m sorry” look before vanishing. Anna scoffed, angry that they left her behind and angrier that she didn’t have the proper jurisdiction. If not for Sergeant Mathis’s intervention, she would’ve been off the case days ago.

  After dropping off the VHS tapes back in evidence, Anna slipped into the briefing room and studied the whiteboard again. A picture of Lily Kendale had been posted under Victim Two. The cute girl had a shy smile, big hazel eyes, and sandy blonde hair. Anna turned her attention to the image of Cain during his first visit to Hikers Middle School. He wore a t-shirt, jeans, and a ball cap. Using her fingernail, she peeled back the tape and held the piece of office paper. She studied the image intently and looked closer at the man’s hat. Faintly visible was the faded remnants of a word. It started with an L, but the rest was too far gone. Same hat. Same man.

  Anna stepped back and caught her breath. A few officers passed by the window that faced the hallway outside. Anna straightened herself up, unsure why she didn’t want to show her weakness. After putting back the image and snapping a few photos of the updated whiteboard, she headed home. She needed to shun her office for the time being.

  “I made you a sandwich,” Richard said softly as he ste
pped into the bedroom. Anna took the plate and placed it beside her laptop and notepad. She fixed the cushion on the wooden dining room chair that became her bedroom desk chair over two decades ago. A collage of magazine cuts-out was stuck to the corkboard above her desk. Richard flattened a crinkled corner of an empowering supermodel tacked up with an encouraging quote. “Evan is keeping Grace together, but he’s slipping too.”

  “I’m trying, Dad.” Anna took a bite of her lunch, glad to take a break from browsing dozens of hats with the word Limberg, Lindart, or a variation that could open her up to a potential seller and sales record.

  “I know, sweetie.”

  “Hey, Dad,” Anna stopped Richard before he could leave.

  “Yeah?”

  “Look at this.” She turned around her laptop, revealing the cropped image of Cain’s reflection and the image from Hikers.

  Hands in pockets, her father leaned in. “What I am--”

  “I’ve spent the last few hours trying to figure out if the name on this cap means anything. If it's a baseball team, I can’t find it.”

  “My memory isn’t as sharp as it was, but I can look.” He fished out his glasses and studied the images. “Len-something-or-another. That’s certainly no team I’ve heard of.”

  Anna bit her lip, unsurprised by yet another dead end.

  “I don’t know the hat, but I think I know the building,” Richard said with uncertainty as he studied the picture of the riverside house in the photo.

  Anna raised her brows. “What about the building?”

  Richard raked his fingers down the stubby grey hairs on his neck in thought. “It looks familiar. I saw it somewhere… though I can’t remember for the life of me.”

  “Think, Dad.”

  Anna waited silently for her father, but inside she begged him to recall something. Anything. The old man’s short-term memory might be failing, but hopefully his long-term memory still had a few more years.