by Rick Mofina
Then there was the Florida case. The day before a family of four—mother, father, their fourteen-year-old daughter and ten-year-old son—were going to move to Alaska, a good friend and neighbor arrived to help. In the night their Florida home burned and the parents and boy were killed. The girl vanished, but left messages saying she killed her family because she didn’t want to leave the thirty-eight-year-old neighbor with whom she’d fallen in love. Ultimately, the FBI determined the disturbed neighbor had killed the girl’s family, forced her to write the untrue messages and abducted her to a remote cabin in Tennessee, where he was killed in an armed standoff. The girl was rescued.
The next case had happened in Montreal, Canada, where a thirty-year-old drifter spotted a pretty fifteen-year-old girl walking home from school near a park and became obsessed with her. For several days he stalked her until late one night he discovered a back door to her large home was unlocked. He entered, and while everyone was asleep he found the girl’s bedroom, threatened and gagged her before abducting her. He lived in a van in a vacant lot, took her there and sexually abused her. He had planned to kill her and roll her body into a discarded carpet and toss it into the St. Lawrence River, but the girl pleaded and begged for her life with such fury she distracted him and escaped to a gas station nearby.
Zubik came to the last case in the batch, and it hit him like a gut punch.
Six years ago, a respected, wealthy couple, loved by everyone for their devotion and involvement with charities, had called 911 and reported their eleven-year-old son had been kidnapped in the night from his bedroom of their large, upscale home. They showed investigators a lengthy handwritten note demanding a one-hundred-thousand-dollar ransom within twenty-four hours. Detectives questioned the puzzling wording of the note, raising concerns about its authenticity. Fearful that time was ticking down on the boy’s life, the family rushed to secure the cash, putting them at odds with detectives who insisted on first searching the property for more evidence.
Still, within hours of their 911 call, the mother made a horrible discovery, finding her son’s body hidden in a basement storage room. He was gagged, his hands were bound and he’d been stabbed multiple times in his chest and abdomen. The family insisted an intruder was responsible. Autopsy results showed that the boy’s death was due to his stab wounds, but that he was actually just barely alive for a time after being stabbed. The autopsy also showed that he’d first been rendered unconscious, appearing dead, by a traumatic blow to the head prior to his being stabbed. Nothing added up. Investigators wanted to question and polygraph the mother, father and their sixteen-year-old daughter, who was a high-achiever and destined for one of the country’s top universities.
The family refused to cooperate.
Angered police didn’t pursue the intruder theory, the parents got lawyers, refused to be polygraphed and hired their own private investigators, who wrote a report supporting the family’s theory. But two years later the mother and daughter were found dead, due to an overdose of a powerful sleeping aid. In the note she left, the mother detailed how her daughter, in a fit of rage “over something inconsequential,” had struck and killed her younger brother. The parents, fearing their daughter would go to prison—because at the time she would’ve been tried as an adult—panicked and covered up the crime, staging the whole thing, even stabbing their son. The mother said her dead son visited her in her dreams, and she could no longer live in torment and had laced her daughter’s favorite food with the drug before taking it herself. The father admitted his role, pleaded guilty and received a fifteen-year sentence.
The tragedy, which had happened in Syracuse, haunted Zubik because he was one of the investigators. Like his colleagues, he couldn’t forgive himself for allowing the family to deceive them in the early stages, to deflect suspicion, to have them focus on the case solely as if it were a kidnap for ransom.
I believe that little boy was still alive when we first got to that house. Even if the medical examiner said it was unlikely, I can’t shake the gut feeling that had we moved faster to take control we might have saved his life.
As far as Zubik was concerned, the lesson hammered home in all of these cases was that they could pull you in any direction.
You have to remember the basics. People think they know people. They don’t. You never know what’s in a person’s heart. What they’re hiding, what they’re capable of when they’re trapped in a bad situation and see no way out. Their first instinct is to lie and most of them do.
Zubik pulled out his phone and looked at the photos of Maddison Lane. Then he looked at the news photos of Ryan, Karen and Tyler. Then he studied pictures of them being comforted by Cole, Jill and Dalton.
Zubik took stock of all the facts he knew so far.
Was it an intruder? Is Maddison a runaway? Or is something going on with this family?
27
Jill Lane’s sleep was fitful.
Worry for her niece plagued her, moreover she was troubled by what Karen had revealed about her past. Through the night Jill had grappled to comprehend how, as a young girl, Karen had found her mother dead, how she’d been with her younger sister when she drowned, and now this—her daughter’s abduction.
My Lord, how much pain is Karen supposed to bear?
That thought triggered another, and Jill replayed the memory of seeing Cole consoling Karen at the search center. The subtleties of how he’d held her, how Karen looked at him, betrayed a closeness that secretly troubled her. Jill had to keep reminding herself that their bond was forged years ago during the time Karen and Ryan had helped Cole through his darkest days after his injury.
You’ve got to push that kind of thinking about Cole and Karen out of your mind right now because we’ve got another tragedy to overcome.
The lights on the clock at Jill’s bedside read 4:45 a.m.
Cole’s side of the bed was empty. Jill saw the glow at the table across the room by the window where Cole was working on his tablet and went to him.
“Any word?” she asked.
“Nothing. I’m just going through some of the tips.”
“Did you sleep?”
“Some. You?”
“Not much, I was thinking about what Karen told me last night. I knew she’d lost her mother and sister, but I didn’t know she was with her sister when she drowned. That’s so horrible. Did she try to save her? Do you know what happened?”
“They’d gone swimming in the Monarda River with a group of friends. It was an accident, that’s all I know. She doesn’t really talk about it.”
“That’s understandable. She’s endured enough tragedy for three lifetimes.”
Suddenly their attention was drawn to the window and the car that had arrived. Neither of them recognized it.
“Is it one of your guys?” Jill asked.
“I’m not expecting anyone at this hour.” Cole watched a man and woman get out of the car and approach the door. “It’s Zubik and his partner.”
“Maybe they’ve found her?”
Jill and Cole headed to meet them just as their doorbell chimed throughout the house. In seconds, Karen, Ryan, Tyler and Dalton, desperate for news about Maddie, had joined Jill and Cole, who were standing in the foyer with the detectives.
“What is it?” Karen pressed them. “Did you find Maddie?”
“No, not yet,” Zubik said. “We’ve got a lot of people working hard to help get Maddie home to you.”
“We know that but are there any promising leads?” Cole asked.
“Nothing we can discuss here,” Zubik said. “What about your team, Cole? They find anything you can share?”
“Nothing yet, but if we do you’ll be the first to know.”
“Good,” Zubik said. “Listen, we’re sorry to call on you so early, but we have a lot of work ahead of us.” He nodded to Ryan, Karen and Tyler. “We’d like you to help us out
by agreeing to take polygraph exams today.”
Karen shot a look to Ryan then Cole, telegraphing her unease. Ryan put his hand on Tyler’s shoulder as Zubik and Asher observed their reactions.
“I don’t have a problem with that,” Ryan said. “I told you before we’ve got nothing to hide. Right, Karen?”
“We’ll do anything to help find Maddie,” she said.
“Good. It’ll be very helpful,” Zubik said. “We’ll need you back at our offices downtown at 1:00 p.m., okay? We can send a car.”
“No need. We’ll have them there,” Cole said.
“All right. There’s one other request,” Zubik said. “We’d like to interview you, Cole, and your wife and son real soon, maybe later today if possible. We’d also request you volunteer your phones to us and consent to us searching your house, your vehicles. Would your family be willing to do that?”
“Yes. We’ll cooperate.”
“Thank you. That should be it for now.” Zubik turned to leave just as Dalton casually brushed back his hair, briefly revealing the side of his face. Zubik stopped; his eyes landed on Dalton. “What happened to you, son?”
“What?”
“Those marks, those little scratches on cheek there.” Zubik touched his own cheek near the back of his jaw and shot Asher a subtle glance.
“Oh.” Dalton blinked, his face reddened. “I fell in a hedge at a party the other night.”
Cole and Jill stared at Dalton’s face. The little scratches had been hidden by his hair, and they were seeing them for the first time.
“You must’ve been having a good time,” Zubik said.
“What do you mean?”
“Pull up your sleeves and hold out your wrists.”
Dalton tugged up the long sleeves of his hoodie.
“You get those at the party, too?”
“Oh, yeah. I fell pretty good.”
Everyone saw little scratches around Dalton’s wrists, then Asher took pictures with her phone.
“Hey!” Cole said. “What’re you doing? What’re you implying?”
“We’re not implying anything, Cole,” Zubik said. “We’re just keeping a record of things. Is that a concern for you?”
Cole looked at Zubik for a long tense moment.
“No, not at all.”
28
Kalmen T. Gatt stood with his back to the wall of his quarters and his arms at his sides as instructed.
The investigation concerning Maddison Lane had continued through the night into the morning, throwing off all procedure and schedules at the Residential Reentry Management Center on DeBerry Street.
Two Onondaga County deputies, two case managers and the center’s chief supervisor, Vernon Pike, were searching the two-person room Gatt shared with Brandon Kane, a fraud artist from Cleveland.
As instructed, Gatt and Kane had laid out their personal belongings in an ordered fashion on the surface of their regulation-made beds.
The search commenced with Gatt.
Everything he owned was counted and reconciled on a clipboard against the center’s official inventory of his listed property. Each article of clothing was squeezed, sifted and prodded, toiletries were checked and shoes were inspected. Every item was shaken, poked and felt by deputies wearing latex gloves before it was tossed to the floor.
The sheets of Gatt’s bed were yanked, his pillow crushed and tossed, his mattress hefted, rotated and seams inspected.
After completing their search of Gatt’s property, they moved on to Kane’s. When they’d finished rifling through his belongings, they searched the bathroom, the toilet tank and lifted drain covers. Then they scoured the rest of their quarters.
They were nearly finished when a case manager entered the room.
“Vern, there’s something your team needs to see downstairs.”
* * *
On the center’s main floor, in a rear section of the building, there were a number of utility and anterooms. Among them was a small, unlocked auxiliary room that housed supplies that were seldom used.
“Come inside,” said Ross Nichols, the deputy who’d made the discovery.
The narrow room had one window that had been hidden by stacked storage tubs. The window was unsecured and large enough for someone to exit and enter.
“Okay,” said Pike, turning to the other investigators who’d joined the group. “We have an unsecured window. We’ll rectify that.”
“There’s more.” Nichols led them from the room and nodded to the nearest corner and the suspended surveillance camera. “That’s camera number nine. My partner, Bill, is going to stay here. Come with me.”
Pike and the others followed Nichols across the center to the room that held the control panel for the surveillance cameras. The on-duty security officer overseeing them looked young enough to still be in high school. He’d put down his personal phone when Nichols entered and pointed to the rows of small TV monitors.
“See, number nine’s aim doesn’t capture the auxiliary room with the unsecured window.” Nichols reached for his phone and called his partner. “Bill’s going to show you that by crouching, twisting and ducking, it’s possible for anyone to make their way through the center to that room without being recorded on the cameras.”
The deputy spoke into the phone, and everyone at the control panel saw Bill in one monitor wave from a starting point, then he disappeared. Several moments passed and the deputy, phone to his ear, turned to the group.
“Bill’s now in the auxiliary room at the window. But we never saw him on any of the cameras.”
Pike’s scowl deepened as he glared at his young acne-faced officer and the monitors of the control panel, cursing under his breath at the clear lapse of security.
“This is serious shit,” Nichols said, pressing a number on his phone. “We’re going to seal this room and the exterior. We’ll have our evidence people process it to determine if your inmates have been leaving after curfew.”
29
Grant Leeder, the former Syracuse detective working for Cole Lane, found Ray Velvet waiting in a back booth of the crowded coffee shop.
Velvet had long blond hair, a full beard and a craggy face.
“You look like crap, Ray.” Leeder sat in the booth.
“I sleep in the day.” He was nursing a tea and muffin.
“Right, the pimp shift.”
“Where’s my cash and what do you want?”
Leeder slid five twenties across the table to Velvet.
“We’re looking for a twelve-year-old girl who was abducted from her family home, or may have run away. I want you to ask your people to get the word out on the street and help find her. She’s on the news.”
Velvet nodded as he chewed on his muffin and studied Maddison Lane’s picture on Leeder’s phone.
“Cute, has potential,” Velvet said.
“Don’t, or I swear I’ll split you in two right here.”
“Okay, calm down, old man. Send me her photo. I’ll get the word out.”
“You’d better, Ray.” Leeder tapped on his phone. “I’m the reason you’re not in prison right now. You owe me and I’m collecting.”
“Right, I’m beholden to you. Try the vegan muffins—they’re outstanding.”
* * *
At that moment, Sally Beck, another of Cole’s investigators, was waiting at a table in an empty corner of the True Light Shelter, reading the passage from Psalms 61 taped to the wall.
“From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I. For thou hast been a shelter for me...”
This was the fourth in the list of the city’s missions and hostels Beck intended to canvass today. As a detective on the job, she’d worked in vice and with the Missing Persons Unit, and had built up a rapport with the p
eople who operated the facilities.
Beck knew that young runaways often emerged at shelters, and wanted to get the word out about Maddison Lane, especially to kids living on the edge of society. April Kent, manager of True Light, had agreed to help, bringing two of the most recent clients, two teenage girls, to the table.
The girls, strangers to each other, had arrived at the shelter after running away from abusive homes—one in Utica, the other in Rochester. Beck thought that they didn’t look much older than Maddison, and knew that April was working with social services to help them.
“We’re just asking anyone for help finding this girl.” Beck showed them Maddison’s photo and information. After studying the picture, the girls agreed to ask around about Maddison. “Good, there’s a reward.” Beck smiled.
“I hope nothing bad happens to her,” one of the girls said.
* * *
In the Syracuse office of Cole Lane’s private investigation agency, Vince Grosso was traveling in a depraved realm of the dark web.
He’d already spent much of the morning alerting investigators in the company’s offices across the country for help on Maddison’s case.
Now, he’d set out to mine information from the most vile people on earth—pedophiles, human traffickers, pornographers and every freak imaginable. When he was a detective, Grosso had worked on cases involving cyber stalking of children. Posing as a pedophile online, Grosso had gained access to the most guarded sites where members exchanged and sometimes auctioned and sold images and information about children.
In the successful investigations, Grosso was able to lure and track down real pedophiles, which in some cases led to the rescue of their victims.
Now, as Smoothoperator4950, Grosso was at work on Maddison’s case, going to one of the most active discussion sites and posting.
Looks like we’ve got fresh meat out there from Syracuse.
