Missing Daughter

by Rick Mofina

  Zubik and Asher settled into cushioned chairs.

  Night had fallen, and as they watched the city’s lights twinkling, Zubik reviewed Gatt’s prison file.

  Prison psychiatrists had measured his IQ at 138, noting that he possessed very superior intelligence. Gatt had been subjected to various psych assessments to determine his sexual preferences in order to uncover any cognitive distortions, or desires concerning having sex with children. The findings had raised no concerns. Results showed that he was a thirty-five-year-old heterosexual male whose sexual desires were for heterosexual women aged twenty-five to forty-five.

  That turned out to be wrong, Zubik thought, because it was clear Gatt desired women younger, much younger.

  He must’ve learned how to feign his responses to the assessments because if Gatt’s true nature had been discovered, he never would have qualified to serve the last six months of his sentence in a halfway house. This guy fooled everyone, and now he’s our only hope of finding Maddison.

  Every now and then Gatt’s monitors would bleep, giving Zubik momentary false hope that he would awaken.

  Every few minutes the detectives checked their phones for any word from other investigators who were working through the night questioning inmates at the halfway house about Gatt and Maddison.

  As the time flowed by, Zubik and Asher sipped coffee from ceramic mugs the nurse had brought them and studied their case notes. It was well after midnight when the detectives heard a muffled, dried croaking.

  Gatt was waking.

  A nurse swept into the room, and with smooth, professional care tended to him, removing his mask and helping him drink water through a straw. She spoke in soft tones while helping Gatt, who couldn’t move.

  Then she turned to Zubik.

  “Detective, I think this is your opportunity.”

  Asher and Zubik each took a side of the bed with Asher using her phone to record. Gatt’s eyes were closed but he was awake.

  “Kalmen, this is Detective Zubik. Can you hear me?”

  Gatt’s eyes flitted and he made a slight nod.

  “Kalmen, do you wish to make a declaration?”

  Gatt gave a nod.

  “Did you kill Maddison Lane?”

  The monitor beeped and Gatt clenched his eyes.

  “Only took pictures,” he said.

  “Did you work with someone else to take her?”

  “Only took pictures. So pretty—so...”

  “Kalmen, where is Maddison?”

  “Only took...so pretty... I see her now...”

  The monitors bleated with alerts, and the detectives cleared away for the nurse, then a doctor and other critical care staff to respond. They worked on Gatt for several minutes.

  The tracking lines on the monitors flattened.

  Gatt was dead.

  40

  At the moment Gatt died, Karen sat alone in Cole’s house, losing her grip on her sanity.

  She had not slept since Maddie’s disappearance. How could she, not knowing where her daughter was?

  It was so late.

  She had not taken the sleeping pills Jill had given her, thinking that it would be wrong for her to rest when Maddie was out there somewhere in the night.

  That reporter had nearly destroyed them all. Karen felt locked in a cage of fear and pain. The polygraph had been an evisceration.

  “They can be rough, like an emotional autopsy on the living,” Cole had said before they’d urged Karen to get some sleep. But she couldn’t sleep. Her entire body ached. The only way to battle her pain was to stay awake, think about Maddie and mentally reach out to her.

  Keep hope alive.

  No one saw Karen when she left the house through one of the rear entrances. Inhaling the crisp night air, feeling the soothing lawn under her feet, she walked around the big house to the long driveway lined with apple trees that scented the air.

  In this quiet part of the city, there was less light from other buildings; the sky was beautiful and lit by a half moon. Karen sent love to her daughter.

  Are you seeing the same moon where you are, sweetie? Wherever you are, I’m keeping you in my heart, holding you safe there until we’re together again.

  The polygraph had taken a terrible toll, forcing Karen to exhume the long-buried, painful things she’d done. She remembered how she had battled with her mother, the same way Maddie had battled with her.

  She remembered the price she’d paid.

  Oh God.

  Alone in the night, she felt herself going back to when she was thirteen years old and took Cassie swimming with friends at the weir in the Monarda River.

  At the time, Karen had a crush on a boy, Gibb Wallerby. She wanted to be his girlfriend, but her mother would not allow her to date boys.

  At the weir, the older kids played a game called “the wall crawl,” where they’d go into the water and let the pressure flatten their bodies against the weir; it was made of railroad ties and they were slippery, kind of greasy. The kids would slide under, doing a Spider-Man crawl, open their eyes and touch the bottom, then crawl back to the surface while the water was pressing them against the weir. But older kids, girls or boys, would then flash their privates to each other while underwater.

  Karen had done the wall crawl a few times. Cassie wanted to do it, too, but she was too small, not strong enough. Karen wouldn’t let her do it.

  “I’m going to tell Mom that you’re trying to make Gibb Wallerby your boyfriend if you don’t let me do it!” Cassie said.

  Karen thrust her finger under Cassie’s nose.

  “You wouldn’t dare because I’d kill you if you did!”

  When Gibb invited Karen to do it with him, she agreed. It was her chance to steal him away from Marla, his girlfriend at the time.

  Karen and Gibb went under together, and they showed each other their privates then surfaced to see Marla watching them as Karen adjusted the strap on her top. Marla confronted Karen about stealing her boyfriend with Cassie witnessing their exchange.

  “I’m going to tell Mom on you,” Cassie said afterward.

  “Fine. Go do the wall crawl if you want, but you can’t tell,” Karen said.

  That’s when an ice-cream truck came to the weir and most of the kids went to it.

  Except Cassie.

  Karen couldn’t find her sister.

  Cassie! Where is she? What happened to her?

  Karen called and called her name.

  And now, standing in the dark under an indifferent moon, Karen called out again, only now it was for her daughter.

  “Maddie! Maddie!”

  Her calls grew louder, becoming screams as she called.

  “Maddie! Maddie, come back! Please come back! I’m so sorry!”

  Between great gulping sobs, Karen screamed into the night.

  She screamed until Ryan, Jill and Cole found her and got her back into the house.

  41

  Zubik had managed to eat a sandwich, get two hours of sleep, a shower and coffee before Asher picked him up in the morning for the next case-status meeting at headquarters.

  As Asher drove through the city’s empty streets in the predawn, one question weighed on Zubik.

  Are we closer to finding her?

  In the elevator Asher saw the dark lines pulling at the corners of his mouth, the new wrinkles near his eyes signaling his frustration.

  “Gatt’s our guy,” she said. “We know it’s him, and we’re going to find her, Stan.”

  Zubik said nothing.

  An air akin to defeat permeated the task force meeting room.

  Gatt’s death had left investigators with questions and theories, but nothing pointing to where Maddison Lane was. No one in the task force was surprised that interviews of halfway house inmates conducted through the night b
y state, county and Syracuse investigators had yielded nothing.

  “The inmates adhere to the code of silence,” said deputy Rance Carver. “Each one of them claims to know nothing about Gatt’s connection to the girl or her whereabouts.”

  “What about Brandon Kane, his roommate?” Captain Moe Tilden asked. “Didn’t he want to leverage what he might know to help with his own beef?”

  Carver shook his head. “Kane had nothing.”

  “So that leaves us with Gatt’s last words that he never touched Maddison Lane, that he only took pictures of her,” Asher said.

  “Based on experience,” Tilden said, “we can all agree that guilty people lie. Even those on death row convicted irrefutably by DNA will proclaim innocence with their dying breath.” Tilden surveyed the detectives around the table. “I suggest we consider Gatt’s denial a lie.”

  “I agree,” Asher said. “Gatt chose Maddison. He had motive, and opportunity through his passes and the unsecured window at the halfway house. We’ve got his photographs and his admission of taking them. We’re looking at his movements to see if he shared them with anyone.”

  “But what if Gatt was telling the truth?” asked Earl Reid, a state police investigator. “What if all he did was take pictures of her?”

  “Why believe him?” Asher said. “Gatt’s deceived everyone for years about his sexual desire for children.”

  “You’ve got nothing putting him in her room,” Reid said. “And she didn’t scream or struggle.”

  Asher glanced at Zubik, who’d steepled his hands in front of his face while listening to the arguments.

  “Maybe Gatt established an online relationship with her,” Detective Jan Ford said. “He was a cyber expert with above-average intelligence. Maybe he convinced her he was a boy from school using a burner. Or a secret admirer who suggested a Romeo and Juliet meeting and she bought into it?”

  “But you can’t put him in the room,” Reid said again. “You’ve got no prints, no shoe impressions and no phone with the mystery number she’d been communicating with.”

  “He could’ve been working with someone else,” Ford said.

  Earl Reid shook his head. He wasn’t buying it.

  A moment passed while the investigators absorbed the debate, with Reid looking at Zubik. “Stan, you’re the lead, what do you think?”

  After consideration Zubik said, “We’re still building the case against Gatt. We’re getting warrants for the computers at Gatt’s job and interviewing people there. His camera, his tablet are still being processed by IT. Forensic people are still working on Gatt’s room, and on the ladder. Crime Scene’s wrapping up at the house and processing every print lifted there. We’re working as fast as we can to locate Maddison. We’ll continue gathering facts and evidence and following every lead. We can’t forget we’ve got plenty of other vital work in this investigation to resolve. Let’s move on.”

  Ties were loosened, shirtsleeves were rolled up and coffees were freshened as the task force provided updates on other facets of the case.

  Polygraph results for Ryan, Karen and Tyler Lane were expected later in the day. The results of polygraphs done on the babysitter, Crystal Hedrick, and her boyfriend, Zachary Keppler, showed them to be truthful. Arrangements were being made for Cole, Jill and Dalton Lane to be polygraphed.

  More investigators from Syracuse drug, vice and robbery units were being brought in and the FBI, Onondaga County and state police were adding more resources to the task force.

  One key assignment was the need to reinterview Maddison’s friend Brooke Carson, who had told Zubik and Asher that Maddison had appeared “scared” after confiding to her that, “something was happening in her life.” This needed to be followed, Zubik noted.

  Moreover, time lines and alibis were being checked for everyone connected to Maddison and her family.

  Nothing significant had arisen after checking the whereabouts of Maddison’s friends and schoolmates, including the boys she liked: Caleb Langford, Logan Bostick and Noah Trell. It was the same in checking the backgrounds and movements of her teachers and gymnastics coaches, as well as neighbors and the men and women who worked with Ryan and Karen Lane.

  So far, examination of all the phones and computers volunteered to the task force had not yielded any communication with Maddison deemed to be suspect, nor had they pinpointed the source of the mystery number of the last person she’d communicated with before disappearing.

  The Computer Forensic Unit, the FBI and state police IT specialists continued working on the burner phone number, and had applied for new warrants to track cell phone towers that may reveal the phone’s location when it was used to communicate with Maddison.

  Task force investigators confirmed that Cole and Jill Lane had dined at the Inn on the Lake in the hours before Maddison was last seen.

  Jenna Guthrie and several friends confirmed Dalton Lane was at her birthday party and did fall into shrubs during horseplay with another boy, and that Dalton left the party near midnight with the Slade brothers. A receipt for Whenever-Burger was found in the Slades’ Dodge Challenger, and the boys confirmed loose cable posts had caused the engine to stall, which delayed them getting Dalton home by his curfew. They admitted to having open beer and pot in the car.

  They’d double-checked all the security camera footage provided by the Lanes’ neighbors. Nothing useful had emerged.

  Upwards of one hundred tips and reports from the public needed to be followed. Additionally, at least twenty tips from other police jurisdictions with similar cases across the country were being pursued and analyzed.

  As the meeting wound down, Lieutenant Tim Milton checked his phone and said, “We’re going to put out a bare bones news release this morning stating that Gatt died in custody after seizing a police officer’s weapon—that Gatt, a resident of the halfway house on DeBerry Street, was being questioned as part of the ongoing investigation into Maddison Lane’s disappearance. We won’t say anything more while our work continues.”

  Notes were gathered, sleeves were rolled down and jackets slipped on as the meeting broke up. Asher’s phone vibrated, and she took a call while Zubik used his phone to stare at Maddison Lane’s photo, knowing in his heart that the odds were overwhelming that she was dead.

  I will never give up until we find you.

  A shadow fell over Zubik and he turned to Carl Kirby, the SPD’s chief polygraphist, who had not attended the meeting but wanted to catch Zubik.

  “Stan.” He handed him a sheet of paper. “I wanted to give you the polygraph results for her family. I just completed them. I’ve got to get back to work on the others. Please remember exhaustion and anguish can have an impact on a subject.”

  The sheet of paper read:

  Tyler Lane: Truthful.

  Karen Lane: Inconclusive.

  Ryan Lane: Inconclusive.

  Zubik stared long and hard at the results. Then he folded the paper, put it in his pocket and turned to Asher, who had finished her call.

  “You’ll never guess who that was,” Asher said.

  “I’ve got no time for games.”

  “Roland Franz.”

  “Rollie? Didn’t he retire about ten or twelve years back?”

  “That’s right, living in Tucson, now. No more Syracuse winters. He just saw the news on the Lane case. He says that back in the day he’d been assigned to work on the Cassie McHenry death with the Onondaga County medical examiner.”

  “Karen’s younger sister.”

  “Right. Rollie says that even though the little girl’s death had been ruled accidental and the cause was drowning, in light of the new case, we should revisit that old file. He says he’d be happy to take any calls on it. What do you think, Stan?”

  “I agree.”

  42

  “Oh my God. I don’t know how much more I can take, Ryan.”
>
  Karen stood in their living room, her mind swirling.

  A uniformed officer in a patrol car had driven the Lanes from Cole’s place to their home, where the crime scene experts had finished processing their house. It looked like a muddied football team had charged through it.

  Silver graphite fingerprint powder was everywhere: on the walls, the windows, the TV, light switches, lamps, doors, doorknobs, door frames. In the kitchen it was smudged on the sink, the stove, the fridge, cabinets, counters, the dishwasher, tables and chairs.

  “Wow,” Tyler said, staring with his parents in disbelief at the aftermath.

  Every piece of furniture had been shifted, and was now out of place after investigators had rifled through their entire home, hunting for evidence tied to Maddie’s vanishing.

  Karen went to Maddie’s room where the scene was more intense. The walls and the window were coated in the blackish powder; it was on Maddie’s door, shelves, drawers, closet doors. They’d rummaged through her belongings.

  It felt like a violation.

  Karen lowered herself to sit on Maddie’s bed, tracing her fingers over the pillow. It seemed like a lifetime since her daughter was asleep and safe in this bed. Where are you? Karen could not stop the ceaseless onslaught of fear, entwined with images of Maddie struggling, underwater, and Karen unable to save her.

  Please make it stop!

  Karen thrust her hands to her face and sobbed as if she were broken.

  Ryan joined her on the bed, putting his arm around her.

  “We’ve got to be strong, Karen,” he said. “We’ll get through this.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “I called Cole,” Ryan said, “to find out what’s happening. He’s at the search center with Jill and Dalton. They’re on their way.”

  Through her tears Karen looked at her daughter’s room while shaking her head.