by Rebecca Rane
Only one person could.
The Margie Peltz we interviewed was really born in July of 2005. The day her son vanished.
Light. Happiness. Security. All of it disappeared when her son could no longer grasp her hand to walk across the street.
““Horror with no end, no answer, still.”
Horror with no end. That is Margie’s reality. And I don’t want to give you the impression that she’s hysterical or dramatic.
Margie’s lived horror is quiet. She is solitary in her pain. Self-contained as she describes her life. I want you to know this, so you understand her reactions to the next series of events. The shift in her demeanor was seismic.
Investigators often leave out details. Little tidbits, facts, or breadcrumbs that only people involved with the crime, the perpetrator, or the victim would ever know.
Margie Peltz, on the advice of the authorities, was quiet too, about those small breadcrumbs, hoping they’d be a trail for her little lost bird, back to her nest.
This was true with the Peltz story for the last fifteen years.
Until now.
The Cold Trail gained access to the whole file, breadcrumbs, and all.
We were able to see details that hadn’t been released before. We were able to ask her about those details. When Josh Wagy met Margie, he knew every single withheld detail. He followed every breadcrumb back to her.
“Then there’s a toy, I see it over and over again. I had it in my bed. I took it to the playground. I made you put the seatbelt over it.”
The details that only a son and a mother would know, the details that Josh had no way to look up or fake, came pouring out of him.
It wasn’t up to us anymore to prove that he was Ethan Peltz or that he wasn’t.
Margie Peltz looked into the eyes of Josh and saw her son.
And when he told her what he remembered about a five-year-old boy’s favorite things; they were her son’s favorite things.
There was no need to convince either to undergo a DNA test. They both cooperated voluntarily and want it completed quickly and out of the way.
Because to them, it is a confirmation of what they know when they’re together.
He is Ethan Peltz.
I watched Margie grasp Josh’s hand. And for the first time in fifteen years, hope wasn’t a word filled with pain. Hope was fulfilled.
And her son was home.
This is The Cold Trail. I’m Kendra Dillon.
Kendra joined Shoop and Miles.
“Wow,” Miles said as Kendra finished laying her voice on episode three.
“Really?” Kendra asked.
Shoop, double thumb upping at the same time, gave her the answer.
“Yeah, I mean wow, that was something. It’s really him,” Miles said.
“Yeah, all that’s left is the science, but he knows every single fact that was held back. No way at all to make that up,” Kendra explained.
“It won’t take me long. Shoop already cut the sound you needed,” Miles added.
“Great, we need it uploaded within the hour. Our jobs kind of depend on it,” Shoop said.
“Fine, I’ll delay my lunch, but I expect to be paid back with the next run to Ferdo’s, on you two.”
“I’ll go get it right now. You like the gyro platter?” Shoop asked.
“Yes, with extra hummus.”
Shoop high-fived Miles and then asked Kendra, “Garbage or Fattoush?”
“Fattoush would be perfect.”
“And Kendra, this might be our best episode yet, despite us having to do it under pressure,” Shoop added. “Thank you for running interference.”
“Please, we’re a team. I was just as likely to have slipped up and told Connor what we had to shut him up. We’re here because we got each other’s backs,” Kendra assured Shoop. And it was true. If Shoop wasn’t around, Kendra would be lost.
Shoop took off to get Miles his bribe, and Kendra headed back to her desk.
She put a call in to Josh. After the risk she’d taken to investigate his story with only his word, she was a little stung that he’d gone to the television news.
Josh didn’t answer, so she left a message.
“Hi, it’s Kendra. I wish you would have told me about the television interview. Sort of a professional courtesy, you know. Well, call me back when you can.”
What was next? They’d bought themselves a little time by coming out with episodes two and three in rapid succession, but now, where did the story go?
Assuming the DNA proved what they all believed that Ethan Peltz was Josh and vice versa, where did they need to dig to find out how in the heck that had happened?
Kendra looked at the whiteboard. Episode three was done, with a promise that soon, they’d have the DNA.
That would take all of about four seconds to convey in the next episode.
Kendra felt hollow, like she hadn’t earned the accolades Miles and Shoop just heaped on her for this episode.
This story had literally walked into the office. And it was still shrouded in mystery.
Who kidnapped Ethan? How had Josh wound up on the streets?
She opened up the file the sheriff had given her.
There was nothing in there that explained how Ethan had vanished.
She decided to read the tips received in the early days.
Calls into anonymous tip lines were exhausting to sift through. They were mostly wild goose chases. But every once in a while, there was something.
Some nugget connected to the crime, an avenue to pursue.
Usually, those nuggets came in the very beginning, in the first few days after an abduction, but sometimes it was later.
Was there anything that had been overlooked?
Kendra decided to settle in and read. They had the time. The episode was in Miles’ hands. She could dig deep.
An hour went by without her even noticing, and Shoop was back with her lunch.
“What’s the plan, boss?”
“The plan is, let’s dig into these tips, every single one.” Kendra pointed to the two boxes of tips they hadn’t even started to look at yet. Everything had moved so fast with this story, from the moment Josh walked in.
“Oh, boy, a lot to wade through. Are we looking for anything specific?”
“No, not really. I don’t know.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Who took him?”
“Alright, let’s do it.”
Shoop grabbed the top box and brought it over to her desk with a thud. Dust wafted up from it.
They got to work reading. And for the most part, it was one whackadoodle after another, from alien abductions to sighting of clowns in the sewer that for sure abducted children.
But they forged through.
At around three in the afternoon, their phone started ringing.
“WPLE, The Cold Trail,” Shoop answered.
Kendra looked at her phone, which was buzzing all of a sudden.
“Yes, she does, but I have to check her schedule. Yep, let me get your number. I’ll get back to you.”
Kendra didn’t recognize the number on her phone. And the next one, and the next one.
“Oh boy, look at this,” Shoop said, and Kendra came over to look at her computer screen.
Seventy-five emails had flooded in over the last few minutes.
“What?” Kendra looked at Shoop with confusion.
“Girl, the episode dropped. It’s live, and people are going bananas.”
“Oh, yeah, wow.”
Kendra lifted up her phone again, the buzzing now non-stop.
“We did it,” Shoop said and appeared to be controlling the urge to do a happy dance.
Her phone buzzed again. This time she did recognize the number. Connor Stinson.
“You bitch!”
“Nice to hear from you, Connor,” Kendra said.
“You ruined my scoop!” Connor raged.
“That’s not accurate. As you know, you were a
bout to ruin mine.”
“Yeah, well, you win, first out with the Peltz thing. I thought podcasters weren’t supposed to be airing episodes every day. That was the appeal for you, right?”
“Yeah, you forced our hand, so congratulations there.”
“Well, tune in at six for the exclusive television story, if not the first story with Ethan Peltz.”
“Can’t wait.”
The story was out there, from them, and soon Connor would be first on broadcast television. But regardless, they’d beaten everyone to the punch, so she knew that it would be good for them with Art and J.D. Atwell.
Whether it was good for finding the truth, well, Kendra realized that was debatable.
Chapter 21
Kendra and Shoop did what they could to answer calls, and Kendra wound up on several satellite interviews promoting The Cold Trail. They’d been on this circuit before. It was necessary to reach new audiences. Art was clear about that. It took away from the work they were trying to do, but it also made the work of public broadcasting easier.
They were bringing heat to WPLE, and with that heat came Atwell’s money, and more.
The work of answering questions about the previous episode meant the central question of who actually kidnapped Ethan Peltz remained untouched.
So she and Shoop ended the day with a lot of promotion and no forward motion on that mystery.
Kendra loaded her bag into her Jeep and pulled out of the garage adjacent to WPLE. She drove by the riverfront and then away from her condo.
She didn’t want to go home yet, didn’t want to settle in. A restlessness stirred her from the inside out. She was waiting for science to deliver the next phase of the podcast.
She felt like she was in the same position that Sheriff Meriwether had been in for the last fifteen years.
Slowly, Kendra drove. She arrived before she’d properly realized where she was heading.
It was her old neighborhood, not far from where her dad still lived. The clock read 6:30 p.m., but it was the Midwest in winter. It could be midnight.
Kendra parked along the street. She turned the engine off and reached into her bag. It was there, on her phone. It was a picture of her book report, the one that was in her backpack all those years ago. Her kidnapper had it and waited to send it to her. He wanted to scare her, to keep scaring her. A little jolt at a time.
She put the phone back in her bag and swung open the Jeep door.
Was he out here? Was he watching? Sometimes, she thought he was. She knew he was sending her these things to keep control over her.
He never had it. That’s what she knew for sure. Kendra was in control.
She was here, in this place, alone, to prove it.
She’d done it dozens of times before. No one knew she did. Well, her first therapist did and advised her to stop. She hadn’t.
Kendra looked first at the sidewalk. As her Chuck Taylors hit the pavement, she looked up. The row of hedges was still there, even more menacing now than they’d been when she was a child.
She walked and refixed her gaze to the row. She slowed her pace.
“Are you still watching?” she said to no one in particular, but at the same time to someone very specifically. Someone in a mask, someone almost grown, older than her, stronger than her, more powerful than her.
She felt the bones in her wrist ache a little. They’d healed. She’d healed. She squeezed her eyes tight for half a second and banished the ache.
Kendra stopped. This was the spot. The hedges were cover for the man who’d taken her. The Slender Man, the monster of her memory. The one that had never been caught and that she still couldn’t put a face on.
She looked down the row of hedges. A cold wind jostled the branches. The branches, for a moment, looked like his long arms as they ensnared her. She remembered his fingers like steel vices around her scaphoid bone. He crushed the little pebble-shaped bones so he could control her. She didn’t cry then. Wouldn’t cry now.
Kendra turned into the small space between the bushes. She went further in.
And then she stopped. Her memory stopped and skipped to the point where she was in the basement. Kendra couldn’t remember every detail, no matter how many times she reenacted this part of her abduction.
If her friends or family knew she did this, they’d be distraught. They’d worry.
But it was her own recovery. It was her own therapy. Experts be damned.
Kendra stood a second longer. She let her childhood memory recede and stoked her grown-up will to find answers. To not be afraid.
“Are you still watching me?” she said again, to no one.
Kendra turned and walked back to her Jeep.
The past was dark and painful, but it was her job to vanquish it with her podcast.
She knew how because she did it for herself every day.
She fumbled with her keys; her hands not quite unthawed from her excursion to the site of her own kidnapping.
As the key slid into the lock, she was startled by a voice.
“I’m sorry.”
Kendra whipped her head around to see Josh in the hall, looking as contrite as he sounded.
“You startled me,” she said and pushed her key in and turned it to undo the lock.
“I’m sorry again.”
Josh was twenty-one, but he looked like a kid at that moment. She thought he looked a lot like the pictures of the little boy that were plastered all over when Ethan went missing.
“Come in.” Kendra walked into her place and flipped on a light.
“I know I shouldn’t have talked to the television, but he was persistent. He said it was a different thing, and you wouldn’t be mad. Your message sounded mad.” Josh held up his phone.
Kendra looked at Josh.
“I’m not as mad as I was. It’s just, well, we’re trying to do this right, slowly, and as by the book as we can.”
“What book?” Josh asked.
He had a good point, Kendra admitted.
“Forget it, it’s okay.” Kendra knew it wasn’t up to her interview subjects to protect her story. It was the other way around.
“I promise not to do any more interviews, except for with you.”
“Great, that’s great. But once the DNA confirms things, you’ll be doing interviews with a million people. Ethan is famous, so, yeah, for a bit, you will be too,” Kendra explained.
“I didn’t want that. I wanted to find my mom, and you gave me that,” Josh said.
“I am glad.”
Josh walked further into her apartment, and then a streak across the floor startled him.
“What the?” Josh tensed his body, and Kendra peered around to see Swisshelm reclaiming her condo.
“Sorry, she was too fast for me.” Scott was standing in her doorway, with Swissy’s bag of stuff.
“Scott, uh, that’s right, I forgot,” Kendra said.
“No surprise,” Scott remarked, dropping a little dig.
Kendra took a breath. She didn’t have the energy for this right now.
“Who’s this?” Scott asked, looking at Josh.
“Oh, Josh Wagy, this is my uh, ex, Scott. We share custody,” Kendra explained.
Scott handed her Swissy’s water dish. Kendra had tried to duplicate all of Swissy’s favorite things from their house, here in the condo. But for some reason, the cat wouldn’t drink out of any water dish but the one they’d given her when they were married.
So, along with the cat custody, they also shared custody of the lone acceptable dish.
“Hi. Sorry, I can come back,” Scott said as Josh skirted the perimeter of Kendra’s apartment, along the walls.
“What’s wrong?” she asked Josh.
“Oh, nothing, just allergic, allergic to cats,” Josh explained and continued to move as though Swisshelm was radioactive.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” she replied, and Scott made a move to contain Swissy, who’d sprinted into Kendra’s bedroom.
“It’s okay, I’m late, I need to go. So, yeah. I’ll talk to you later.” And with that, Josh moved as fast as the cat in the opposite direction. Before Kendra could even say goodbye, Josh had disappeared.
Scott came back from her room.
“You’re kidding me with that slider in your room,” Scott said to her.
“What?” Kendra was mentally juggling the cat, the visit from Josh, and now Scott’s admonition.
“It’s unlocked. I checked and it’s unlocked. Someone could easily break into your place,” Scott explained.
“Uh, this is the third floor.”
“You’re talking one good jump from your fire escape and boom,” Scott said to her.
Kendra hung her coat, grabbed some water from her fridge. She followed Scott into her room.
“This isn’t really your department to worry about anymore,” Kendra told him.
“I’m worried about the cat,” Scott said with an exhale.
She softened and realized Scott, despite being ill-suited for her as a husband, was a good person. He was a good cat dad. And standing there, looking slightly embarrassed for overstepping his role as a now ex-husband, he was damn handsome.
“Swissy and I are fine. My pepper spray is in my purse, and my radar is on.”
Kendra stepped forward.
“Sure, door wide open, a stranger in your place, at night, and now this,” Scott said.
“I’m fine. He isn’t a stranger. He’s the subject of this season's cold case.”
Kendra reached her hand out and tugged at Scott’s arm to assure him she wasn’t taking any risks with Swissy’s security. He didn’t need to know she’d just taken a field trip through her own past down a dark street.
“I’ll pick up Swissy in three days. Lock this door,” Scott said, and Kendra nodded.
She also made a show of locking the front door behind him as he left.
“Good!” he called after her. She laughed.
“Finally, they’re all gone,” Kendra said to Swissy. “Just us girls.”
Swissy cat wound her way around Kendra’s ankles and then over to the now specifically positioned water dish.
Kendra settled in and spent the rest of the night cuddled with her kitty and watching Hallmark on television.