by Ty Patterson
‘You again,’ she said by way of greeting.
Her eyes flicked over Meghan’s shoulder, past Beth and Zeb, and took in the two cops.
Her eyes widened. She stumbled backward.
A hand went to her mouth and she sagged against a wall.
‘Noooo.’
Chapter Nine
Meghan lunged forward and caught her before she fell.
‘It’s not like that, ma’am. Nothing like that.’
She kept repeating till the mother listened, got her strength back in her legs and stood upright. Meghan held her and walked her to the living room.
She glanced at her sister; Beth disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a glass of water.
Amy Kittrell emptied it, wiped her mouth with the paper towel Beth gave her and lifted a hand limply.
‘Thank you. Sorry, I thought –’ she shook her head. ‘I don’t know what to think. I hear a knock or the phone rings; I hope for the best and fear the worst.’
She raised her eyes at Meghan when no one replied. ‘You must have something to ask. That’s why you are here.’
There’s no easy way to frame this.
‘Ma’am, we went to Mayo and Kane today. They said your husband doesn’t work there.’
Amy Kittrell sat blankly for a moment and then sat upright on the couch. ‘How’s that possible? Josh worked there all his life.’
‘There is a Josh Kittrell there, ma’am. We met him. But he isn’t your husband.’
The house fell silent. Kitchen appliances clicked on and off softly and in the distance, a siren wailed.
The mother sat for long minutes as if she was punched in her stomach, and then she rose.
‘He has his employment papers. I’ll get them.’
She disappeared in the depths of the house and they heard movement from one of the bedrooms.
Drawers opened and closed. Wardrobe doors opened and shut.
Footsteps sounded, but she didn’t return to the living room. Sounds came from a second bedroom and then from the furthest end of the house.
Her face was white and her hands were shaking when she returned.
‘His papers. They are missing. His clothing is missing. None of his stuff is where it should be.’
The papers were stored in a safe in a wardrobe, in a plastic wallet. They contained his employment contract, letters of commendation, various correspondences related to his job.
The wallet was missing.
His wardrobe was empty. The shoe rack didn’t have his footwear.
‘I didn’t open his wardrobe. Didn’t pay attention to the shoe rack.’ She struggled to get words out and drank gratefully from a glass of water that Beth brought for her.
She placed the glass on a side table and looked around the house as if seeing it for the first time.
She left the room abruptly and they heard more doors slamming inside the house. She went upstairs and when she returned, her face was flushed.
‘His toiletries are missing. They’re usually stored in a cabinet. Nothing there. The house looks like it’s been vacuumed.’
Her shock was reflected in Beth’s face.
‘Nothing of his is left behind?’
‘Nothing.’
Pizaka made a show of removing his shades and pocketing them.
‘Ma’am,’ he asked gravely. ‘We’ll need to get a forensic team in here.’
She gestured with a limp hand. Do whatever you have to. A single tear ran down her cheek; she made no attempt at wiping it.
‘What about his salary? It must be credited to some bank account?’ Chang asked in a neutral tone.
She shook her head. The account details were in the wallet too. She didn’t remember them, nor did she remember the bank’s name.
‘I earn more than enough. The mortgage payments go out of my account. His account was of no interest to me. His salary was our play money.’
A muscle twitched on her cheek. She raised a hand and covered it, as if to silence it.
‘Did you visit his office any time, ma’am?’
‘No.’
Amy Kittrell had never visited her husband’s office. There was no reason to. She wasn’t the kind to take pride in her husband’s office. She knew who the employer was, that was enough.
She kept shaking her head at the questions the cops asked, seeming to shrink in the couch as the weight of the revelations set in.
‘What does it all mean?’ she asked once.
They had no answer.
Her sobbing stayed in their minds as they left her house and headed to their vehicles.
Zeb had barely rolled their SUV a few feet, when he stopped after spotting Chang’s wave in his mirror.
The cop ran toward them, his phone in his hand.
‘I got a message from Josh Kittrell,’ he gasped breathlessly.
‘He wants to meet us tomorrow.’
Forty-eight hours from Maddie’s kidnap they met Josh Kittrell for the second time.
The smile was the same, the smart grooming hadn’t changed. Along with the smile, there was something in his eyes, a strange light.
He waited for them to sit and when they were settled, he looked at Pizaka and Chang.
‘Any progress on finding the little girl?’
‘The search is still on,’ Pizaka replied blandly. He hadn’t removed his shades and his tan jacket was flawless. Kittrell wasn’t going to upstage him in the grooming department.
The lawyer toyed with a file on his desk when they had fallen silent. ‘I was wrong yesterday.’
He smiled when Meghan leaned forward in interest.
‘I made some inquiries when you had left. Reached out to our various offices in the country. I got a bite from one.’
‘I wasn’t the only Josh Kittrell in this firm.’
Wasn’t? Meghan tamped down on a flicker of excitement and inched further.
Kittrell chuckled. ‘You heard right. A Josh Kittrell worked in our Baybush office in Alabama in our Stakeholder affairs department.’
‘That was what Settlements was called before I took charge.’
‘Josh Kittrell was the family liaison for contractors’ families in the Southwest. We have such liaisons all over the country.’
‘How come you didn’t remember him, yesterday?’ Meghan challenged him.
‘He wasn’t with Mayo and Kane when I took over.’
‘Where is he now?’
A sombre expression replaced the smile on his face.
‘He’s dead.’
Chapter Ten
Meghan’s jaw dropped open for the second time in as many days.
‘Come again?’
She surged forward as if she could squeeze the answers out of Kittrell who rocked back in his chair defensively.
The lawyer opened the file in front of him, withdrew a photograph, and slid it across the table to them.
‘Is that your missing man?’
Meghan snatched it, confirmed it with one glance and passed it to her sister who relayed it to the cops.
‘Yeah, that’s him. The missing father.’
The lawyer extracted another sheet and read from it. ‘The second Josh Kittrell worked with Mayo and Kane ever since he graduated.’
‘He worked as an intern, got offered a permanent job, and like I said, was the family liaison in his last role.’
‘You know anything of Baybush?’
Beth glanced at the cops; Chang made a ‘be my guest’ gesture with his shoulder.
‘Defense contractor town. A couple of large firms have their facilities around which the town is built. One of them builds missile guidance systems, the other, aircraft parts.’
‘That’s right, Ms. Petersen. You have done your homework.’
‘Kittrell’s boss retired a year before Kittrell died and at that point the head office decided to move that role, and Kittrell, to New York. He would have worked with me, if he had survived that accident.’
‘How and when did he die?�
�� Meghan burst out, unable to contain herself any longer.
‘Road accident. He was driving back from Georgia after meeting a family.’
‘A semi’s wheels came off and the truck veered into him. It crushed him, killing him instantly. The semi’s driver died too.’
He looked at the sheet in his hand. ‘February, five years back.’ He mentioned a date.
Meghan remembered Amy Kittrell’s words. She said they moved in November of that year. Worth checking one more fact with Mr. Fancy Lawyer.
‘He had any family, then?’
‘Yes. A wife and a three-year-old daughter. Amy and Madison Kittrell.’
‘Any brothers?’
‘Not that I know of. Here, this is a copy of his personnel record.’
He slid the folder across to Meghan, spoke in a phone, and his exec turned up with more copies for Beth and the cops.
‘Check out the third sheet inside the folder,’ he directed.
Meghan opened the folder, as did the others and brought out a letter and read it.
She read it a second time, aware that Beth had gasped.
It was a letter from Mayo and Kane to Amy Kittrell and stated, in dry, precise language, that insurance death benefits had been credited to her bank account. It had a single line of praise for Josh Kittrell and offered condolences to the wife.
Silence fell in the office as the twins and the cops read and re-read every document in the folder.
Meghan looked out of the window when she had finished. Bright sunshine bathed the city and yellow cabs weaved in and out, far below.
A ferry was making its slow way to Ellis Island which once had been the first stop for millions of immigrants; who then had made a life for themselves in the city.
‘This gets better and better, doesn’t it?’ The lawyer’s amused tone got her attention.
‘Your missing father looks like the dead man. But he isn’t, is he?’
Meghan waited till the four of them were back on the street, after spending another hour with the lawyer in which nothing useful had been revealed.
‘Just who was that guy living with her for five years? He looked like the dead Kittrell. Has she been stringing us all along?’
Beth angrily kicked a paper cup on the sidewalk and then picked it up and dropped it in the nearest trash can. Her face was stormy, her eyes narrowed to pinpoints of light; however she didn’t reply.
Chang looked moodily across the busy street to where an SUV was parked, a tall, lean man, lounging against it. Zeb.
Pizaka removed his shades, polished them, blew on them gently, wiped them again and wore them.
‘We have more bad news. Our crime scene unit went to Amy Kittrell’s house last night.’
A wailing ambulance cut him off and when it siren receded, he resumed. ‘They found nothing of the man. Said they had never come across a site so thoroughly sanitized.’
‘So we have no way of identifying him?’ Beth’s face was red, a nerve pulsing rapidly on her temple.
‘He could be a family member. A cousin. Or someone who looked like the dead man. We’ll investigate,’ Pizaka replied.
He straightened and addressed the twins.
‘The two of us are the best cops in the city. You both are the finest investigators I have seen. Let’s find out who the abductor is. Let’s find Madison Kittrell.’
He turned and walked away without a further word, Chang following him.
Meghan gaped at their departing backs and then looked at Beth.
‘Did he just compliment us?’
Zeb listened silently as Meghan briefed him, his eyes flicking occasionally to the silent twin in the rear.
He knew how Beth felt.
Beth had been shot in the head several years back when gunmen had gone on a shooting rampage at her university.
She had recovered from that near-fatal injury, but it had left a permanent hole in her memory. Life had begun for her only from the time she had woken up in the hospital.
Her elder sister had nurtured her back, had filled in the gaps for her, and had continually been there for her; however there were still times when she felt lost, didn’t know herself.
Beth knows that’s how Maddie must be feeling. Without any bearings.
He drove through the streets, the hundreds of horses under the hood, straining to break free.
He contained them and navigated them through the controlled chaos that the traffic was. He looked sideways and in the mirror.
‘Find out who exactly died in February, all those years back. Find out if the mother dated men who looked like her husband.’
His mild voice got Meghan’s attention and stopped her mind from wandering. Zeb raised his voice only in combat and only when the situation warranted.
She turned back to see Beth was listening too.
‘Let Pizaka and Chang find that. They can go through the records and more importantly the Baybush PD, quicker than us,’ Meghan replied.
‘We’ll piece together Amy Kittrell’s life for the last five years. Maddie’s too.’
‘And Josh Kittrell, the lawyer. I want to check him out,’ Beth broke her silence.
‘Because he’s smooth?’ Meghan queried.
‘Nah. Roger is smooth. Broker is smooth. Heck, Zeb can be smooth when he makes the effort,’ a spark of humor came to life in Beth.
‘Not because he’s smooth, but because it was too easy. One day there’s no Josh Kittrell, the next day there are two and one of them is dead.’
‘And because he’s a lawyer,’ Meghan smiled.
‘That too,’ Beth nodded.
‘You’re missing something,’ Zeb said.
Meghan frowned at Zeb’s words. ‘What?’
‘Get the dogs.’
Chapter Eleven
Seventy-two hours after Madison Kittrell was grabbed, a pair of sniffer dogs clambered out of a van and trotted toward Beth and Meghan, accompanied by their handlers.
The NYPD’s K-9 division had searched for a trail in the immediate hours following Maddie’s disappearance. They had found one that had ended at a parking space.
The dogs, owned by a former NYPD forensic investigator, were well known in the city.
They were former police K-9s, who were hired out to private investigators and had developed a reputation for picking up trails where the police dogs couldn’t.
Zeb had used them successfully in several Agency missions.
Earlier in the day, Meghan had collected Maddie’s clothing from Chang, and had silently endured Pizaka’s sneer when she said they were getting the dogs in. They didn’t have anything of John Doe for the dogs to scent.
John Doe. That was what they called him since no record or trail of his seemed to exist.
They hadn’t told the mother about the latest revelation; John Doe and the dead Josh Kittrell needed more investigation.
‘It’ll be difficult,’ one of the handlers told the twins. ‘Three days isn’t a long time, however, this is a high traffic density area. Scents get overlaid. They can disappear if a getaway vehicle was involved.’
He removed his ball cap, scratched his head, and replaced it. ‘The NYPD’s K-9s are good, ma’am. If they didn’t find much…’ his voice trailed away.
Don’t expect miracles were his unspoken words.
Meghan nodded in acceptance. They had to try, nevertheless.
The dogs were exceptionally trained and surged against their leashes when the handlers made them smell the clothing.
They sniffed the air, wiggled their noses, bent to the sidewalk, walked around, before one of the dogs uttered a short woof and set off in the direction the assailant had run.
Meghan’s excitement died when the dog stopped and sniffed the pavement a hundred yards away.
The pavement gave way to a row of parking spaces. The NYPD’s K-9s had lost the trail at the edge of the pavement.
The investigator’s dogs stopped at the same edge and looked up at their handlers.
They
went back to the hunt when the men urged them, but it was obvious there wasn’t a trail for them to pick up on.
‘This is as far as we can get,’ the handler shouted at them after several hours. ‘The assailant probably had a car parked here.’
That’s the same theory the NYPD have, Meghan thought.
She went over to handlers, thanked them, and then joined the sidewalk conference Beth was having with Pizaka and Chang, who had arrived a few moments earlier.
‘Josh Kittrell did die in Baybush, on the date the lawyer gave us,’ Pizaka held a finger up on his hand. He had a smirk on his face as if to say, your dogs didn’t do any better than ours, did they?
‘We got confirmation from Baybush PD. They also confirmed he had no brothers. He was the only son. His parents died several years back.’
‘We’ll trace the Kittrell family line. See if there are any cousins who look like the dead man,’ Chang added. His tone wasn’t hopeful.
‘Do any of the cops remember the accident?’ Beth asked still looking in the direction of the dogs who were now climbing into their ride.
‘Nada,’ Chang replied. ‘The Police Chief is new and most of the cops from that year have retired. Or have died. It’s a very small department in a low crime city and is staffed with older cops.’
A second finger went up on Pizaka’s hand when his partner had stopped speaking. ‘There is a paragraph on the accident in the Baybush Daily Times edition of that day. Chang is trying to get hold of the reporter.’
A third finger went up. ‘Finally, there’s the coroner’s report confirming the death.’
He waited for the twins to speak and when they didn’t, he buttoned his jacket.
‘Josh Kittrell, Mayo and Kane’s family liaison, husband to Amy Kittrell, is dead. We’re taking a closer look at Amy Kittrell.’
‘We have to,’ Chang was almost apologetic. ‘Who was the guy living with her? Her husband is dead. Why would she lie about him?’
‘Josh Kittrell is from Burlington, Vermont. He went to University of Vermont, joined the ROTC program and went straight into the Army.’
