by Rebecca Rane
The Moment He Vanished
A Kendra Dillon Cold Case Thriller
Rebecca Rane
Contents
Text copyright ©2021
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
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About the Author
Text copyright ©2021
Rebecca Rane All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law or for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Chapter 1
He was in the dark. He didn’t like that. Not at all.
It was never dark.
His mom might yell sometimes. A lot of the time. But she didn’t make him sit in the dark. The bathroom light was on. Or the light outside in the parking lot was on.
It was never black dark. Blue dark he could take. Blue dark was some light. Even a little bit of light.
But this was black dark. He was in black dark.
He was moving, bumping from side to side. And rolling.
He tried to put out his hands to stop it. Every time he rolled, he hit his head on something.
It was metal. Something metal.
His head. There was a soft spot that felt gross. Mushy.
He cried, but nothing came out.
His pants were wet. Why were they wet?
He inhaled. He smelled it. That’s when he figured it out.
He’d peed. Babies do that. He was ashamed.
But he did it when that man picked him up and threw him in here. Where’s here?
Where am I? He must have fallen asleep for a second.
They’re moving. He could tell they were moving.
And then there was a funny smell. The smell of something like the laundromat. His mom took him there. They had a television at the laundromat, but he was only allowed to change the channel when grownups weren’t using it.
The good days were when he could put on Nickelodeon at the laundromat. He liked Nickelodeon. That made the laundry fun instead of so boring.
He decided to think about his shows. That was a good idea. That was better than the black dark and this smell.
But he couldn’t stop wondering where he was. Where had that man put him?
His body rolled again, forward, and then back. Like it did when the bus stopped fast, and he wasn’t ready for it.
That’s when he figured it out.
He was in a car, but not in the seat. Or on the floor.
He was in the trunk. In the black dark.
He tried to scream for his mom.
He called “Mommy!” Babies do that. But he didn’t care. He wasn’t ashamed.
He was scared. So so so scared.
No one could hear him.
Chapter 2
“Nothing, nothing, and then there’s also nothing.” Adeline Shoop’s voice sounded as exasperated as Kendra Dillon’s soul felt.
“It’s been a month,” Kendra said.
“I know,” Shoop replied. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have a million suggestions for what to cover next on their true-crime podcast.
The Cold Trail was hot. In a short two seasons, they’d made a name for their podcast thanks to solving two cold cases.
Solving.
That was unprecedented.
It had also created pressure to do it again, an impossible feat.
“Art is breathing down my neck,” Kendra said as she remembered her boss’s warning that the money raining down from their underwriter would dry to a sprinkle if they didn’t get on the air with a new season. He’d given them the holidays to revel in their success and also to find something for the new year.
They had reveled, a little, but mostly the two of them had been looking through old stories and suggestions in their inbox and chatting up every lunch counter clerk they ran into in downtown Port Lawrence.
Everyone had a great idea for where they should dig.
But none of them was the right idea. None of the unsolved crimes they’d looked at since December struck them as a case they could build an entire season around.
The thought of lunch counters made Kendra hungry.
“Hey, why don’t you go take a walk to Ferdo’s for a few garbage salads, and I’ll finish answering the emails?” Kendra suggested to her associate producer.
Achieving regular food and nutrition consumption was a personal growth accomplishment for Kendra.
When they were knee deep in a cold case season, Kendra forgot to eat and—to her shame—forgot that her staff of one, Shoop, needed regular food and hydration as well. At least, between manic deadlines, they could get a balanced meal or two.
“Yes!” Shoop said and pumped her fist.
Shoop was just as driven as Kendra, but she was also way more balanced. Kendra leaned toward the single-minded when she had her teeth in a story. Shoop had her puffer coat on in seconds at the suggestion of a regular lunch.
“Make sure you get extra napkins,” Kendra said to Shoop as she shot out the door.
“I know! Our office stash is getting low,” Shoop replied as she walked down the hallway headed for the lobby of WPLE, Port Lawrence Public Radio and Television.
Kendra had promised to slog through the email, clogged with today’s story ideas and requests for interviews, but instead, she looked up at the office whiteboard. It was jammed with clues, questions, suspects, and episode titles from season two.
It was time to erase it. It was time to start clean. But nothing seemed important in comparison with season two, the murder of a nun. The Cold Trail had succeeded in proving a priest was the culprit and part of a conspiracy. They’d put a man in prison, one who’d used his police badge to hide his evil.
It was heady, the reaction that followed. It had gone a long way to rehabbing Kendra’s reputation in her hometown. And, of course, had made her new enemies in powerful places.
She never let that stop her. Kendra Dillon was not afflicted with the need to be liked.
Maybe it was too soon. Maybe Kendra needed more than four weeks to process all that had happened. But that time was a luxury.
Fundin
g for WPLE was down. Pledges were down. The only thing up was the underwriting for The Cold Trail.
Kendra’s job depended on producing a new season; Shoop’s too, and heck, most of the station’s, if her boss was telling the truth.
No pressure.
Kendra ran her hands through her hair. She’d blown it straight, and it hung heavy in her eyes. It was distracting her. If she was going to get anything done, it was time to get the mop plopped up and away. Kendra grabbed the hairband that was always on her wrist. She raked up her red hair, twisted it, and wound the hair band twice to contain the pony into a top knot. By the end of the day, her head would hurt at the roots, but for now, it was out of her way.
“Okay, let’s get serious, Dillon,” Kendra said to herself. She was about to open the email when a shadow darkened her door.
“Mrs. Dillon?” A young man, thin, but not very tall, inched his way into the office space. His voice was quiet, his head bowed a bit. Shy, that was her first impression.
“Uh, Ms., but yes, that’s me.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Ms. Kendra.”
“No, just Kendra, I mean, I’m not married.” Kendra had proceeded to make this weird in record time.
“I need your help,” the young man said. Kendra guessed he was in his teens.
“What’s wrong?” Kendra asked.
The stranger lifted his head and met her eyes with his own. His sandy hair flopped just above his lashes. Long lashes. Boys always got the long lashes, it seemed.
The shyness disappeared.
“I am Ethan Peltz.”
Kendra shook her head. It took a second, and then she connected the dots. Kendra took in a quiet gasp of air and closed her mouth after. It wanted to gape open.
She narrowed her eyes.
“The missing boy, Ethan Peltz?”
“Yes.”
The young stranger was unequivocal with his answer.
Ethan Peltz was the most famous missing kid Kendra could remember.
He was the Madelyn McCann of the Midwest. The Elizabeth Smart of Ohio.
Ethan Peltz was a six-year-old boy who disappeared in the early 2000s without a trace.
Yet here this young man stood, in her office, claiming to be Ethan Peltz.
Kendra’s radar was up. This had to be a hoax. Or someone with major delusions. Kendra gave him a chance to clarify.
“You say you are the Ethan Peltz, the missing boy?” Kendra tried to access all she remembered from the faded headlines.
“I am. I am Ethan Peltz. I just need you to find out why.”
Kendra stared at the young man. His eyes were blue, and they searched hers for answers.
Either the literal poster boy for missing kids had just walked into her office, or a liar had.
Kendra stood up, pulled out a chair at the conference table, and indicated he should sit down.
Something about his blue eyes was haunted, honest, and they held something else Kendra recognized. Pain.
The same kind of pain she’d experienced.
“Okay, well, tell me more.”
Chapter 3
“Wait—before you start. I’m going to record you,” Kendra grabbed her digital recorder, the one she normally used for the field, not in the studio. She didn’t want to waste her sound engineer’s time if this was a hoax.
But if this was real, if this was Ethan Peltz, Kendra didn’t want to miss a word he said.
Everything could mean something in a case, whether it was brand new or a case that had confounded authorities for over fifteen years.
The young man let her lean in to connect a microphone to his winter jacket. The North Face logo let her know it was expensive and probably down filled. He’d be hot if this interview went on more than a moment or two.
“Maybe you’d be more comfortable if you took your coat off?” Kendra suggested.
“Thanks.” He took off his jacket and pushed it behind his chair. He had another jacket on underneath the North Face, a tracksuit style, with some type of Anime character on the front.
He wore jeans and dark tennis shoes. Kendra tried to clock all the details. Details mattered, even if you didn’t know why at the time. Everything he wore was clean, well-cared for. But if he was Ethan, he was older than the teenager she’d guessed.
He’d have to be, what, at least twenty by now?
“So, tell me, who are you?”
“I’m Ethan Peltz.”
“That’s incredible, you know that, right?”
“I… yes.” He hesitated with that answer.
“Why have you never come forward before? Who had you?”
“I grew up about ten miles from here. I kind of forgot I was him.”
“What’s your driver’s license say?”
“Josh Wagy. My name is officially Josh Wagy.”
“Okay, so which do you want me to call you?”
“Josh, I answer to Josh.”
“What makes you think you’re Ethan Peltz?”
“The news, the story on the news. It brought it all up in my head.”
Kendra thought for a moment. What was on the news? And then she remembered.
“Oh, the missing boy,” Kendra said. She had seen it on the news as well. A five-year-old had recently wandered away from his home in a tiny rural town of Lucky, Ohio. It was about fifty miles away from Port Lawrence. It had dominated the local news for the last twenty-four hours. From what Kendra could remember of the coverage, it didn’t seem like the boy had been kidnapped, just lost.
“It made me remember things.”
For the most part, Josh was calm. He appeared lucid. And in full control of himself. Kendra had experience with unbalanced witnesses. Josh appeared to be healthy. He needed answers but didn’t seem out of touch with reality.
“What things did you remember?”
“I was at Sand Point, I remember that,” Josh said. “My mom had let me ride those cars that go in a circle. I saw her as I passed, and on the next pass, she was gone.”
Sand Point was a theme park about an hour away from Port Lawrence. In 2005, the headlines had blared: Sand Point Kidnapping.
That had helped it stick out in Kendra’s mind, that a kid had been snatched from a theme park. Under his parents’ noses. Kendra was very attuned to how kids got snatched.
“Did someone take you off the ride?”
“No, I can’t really remember that part. I know I looked for her and then couldn’t see her.”
“Who took you?”
“A man, he had my hand. I remember looking up and knowing he was a stranger.”
“Did you scream or try to get away?” Kendra asked the question but didn’t like the way it sounded coming out of her mouth. He would have been a little boy. What could a child do if an adult wanted to hurt them?
Kendra knew full well that the answer was nothing.
“I don’t remember crying then or having much choice.”
Of course, he didn’t.
“How old do you think you were?”
“I was five, or maybe six?”
“What happened next?”
“I can’t really remember. I slept. I remember moving while I was sleeping.” This would make sense, drug a kid, keep them quiet, Kendra thought. Get them out of the park and away as fast as possible.
“What then?”
“Then my life just became this new place. With my dad. Or adopted dad, I should say.”
“Where?”
“I live here, in Port Lawrence, I have since I can remember. I did all my school here.” Kendra tilted her head and tried to understand what Josh was saying about his life. That he’d been kidnapped and then just lived here, after, with someone else?
“All this time, you’ve been here even with all these people looking for you?”
“I didn’t know they were or didn’t realize my real name until… well, like I said, until the news the last few days brought up these memories.”
“Have you called the police?”
“No. The man I’ve been with, my dad, he’s not the one who did it. My family didn’t hurt me.”
“Your family? They weren’t the kidnappers?”
“No, I just know I had a life before this one. My dad was a foster dad, and then he adopted me. Before that, though, it’s hard to remember.”
“I guess, but this is all pretty far-fetched.”
“I know, but how much do you remember, really remember, from when you were in kindergarten? Or fourth grade or even later?”
It was a valid point. Most people didn’t remember details about their early life. They remembered images, moments, sensations.
“This is a cold case podcast. What is it you want from The Cold Trail?”
“I want you to help me prove that I am Ethan Peltz.”
“A DNA test will prove that, right? I mean, if we have a match with the Peltz family?”
“Well, then, I guess I want you to help me piece together what happened.”
“That means retracing the steps from Sand Point to here, right now. Are you ready to do that?”
“I am. I saw that boy on TV, and I knew. I knew I had a story like that. And it needed to be told.”
“And you want me to tell it?”
“I want you to find it. I want you to find me, to help me.”
“I think you just walked in here and solved it yourself.”
“There’s a lot I don’t know, can’t put my finger on, because I was so young.”
“But you’re sure you’re him. Maybe you just remember seeing news reports, you know, and somehow grabbed on to that story?”