But thinking about the Parkers now, the weight of any possible consequences waned. This was not just about Sara Beth, but Anne and Scott as well. She had promised them she would do everything she possibly could to bring their daughter home.
“Everything possible,” she whispered to herself.
How could she say no to Bailey’s offer and tell herself she’d kept her promise? She’d spent every spare minute of the past few weeks hoping to catch a break. Perhaps this was it. What if this man could help her find Sara Beth? Did she not owe it to the Parkers to try?
“God dammit,” Cole said under her breath.
She pulled out her phone and called Detective Bailey.
“Hey, Angela,” greeted Bailey after a couple rings, “I’m glad you called. Listen—"
“Your man,” said Cole, “Set it up.”
“He’ll want to meet in the usual spot, up by me,” Bailey replied.
“Text me the address. I’ll be there.”
Detective Cole ended the call. She still didn’t know if she was doing the right thing. But she was doing everything possible.
26
Three days later, Cole got up at 4 a.m. on that Sunday morning to make the drive to the address Detective Bailey had given her. It was the harbor on the Old Town Alexandria waterfront. Driving the 135 miles of open interstate highway, she could count on one hand the number of cars she passed. The nation’s most traffic-clogged metropolitan area was a wide-open thoroughfare this early on a weekend.
Old Town along the Potomac River waterfront was a popular spot for both locals and tourists. Rows of colonial-style buildings lined the narrow streets as the top of the Masonic Temple loomed overhead to the west. What hadn’t been renovated into chic townhouses that started at well over a million became boutique shops and trendy eateries.
Later when the city awoke, the area would slowly fill with weekend warriors looking for brunch or perhaps a bar seat to catch the Nationals game. But here, now, an hour before the sun would rise, Old Town was deserted.
Cole sat in her car; the lone vehicle parked on the block directly adjacent to the marina. She’d arrived early, found a nearby 7 Eleven to grab a cup of coffee and now waited for Bailey or this man to show up next.
A part of her still wondered what she was doing. She liked to think she’d gotten to where she had thanks in large part to knowing where the line was and how not to cross it. As she sat in her car now, prepared to hand over sensitive case information to a man she’d never met, she wasn’t sure she knew where she or the line stood.
A pair of headlights turned onto the street and pulled up curbside behind Cole’s Jeep. She peered in her rearview mirror, waiting to see if she could make out who it was. Instinctively, her right hand reached for the Glock 22 holstered on her hip. But as the driver side door of the vehicle opened, she recognized the slender, leggy frame and long hair of Detective Bailey. Cole climbed out of her car and turned back to greet her.
“Good morning,” said Bailey as she slipped her phone into her navy blazer.
“Morning,” Cole said back as she, “So where’s your boy?”
“He’s probably here already,” Bailey replied, “Come on. Let’s walk.”
She led Cole to the end of the building they had parked in front of, turning its corner onto an alley blocked off to vehicles. In the distance, lampposts lit up the outline of a row of boats that bobbed lazily in the currents of the Potomac.
“So, what’s this guy’s deal,” asked Cole as they walked.
“What do you mean,” replied Bailey.
“How many cases have you brought him in on,” asked Cole.
“It’s not like that. He contacts me asking for info on a case and I help him out.”
“Okay so how many times has that happened?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a dozen or so.”
“And I’m assuming you checked him out before helping him.”
“Of course, I’m not stupid.”
“Well? What’s his deal?”
“There’s not much to know. At least not on paper. Born Jackson no middle name Clay. Nothing noteworthy on his record. Not much known work history. Joined the Army shortly after high school. Became a Ranger.”
“You got that on a background check?”
“A search of his name turned up some military base addresses. I called a buddy who asked around. Served from ’98 to ’05. Married a Nathalie Grace in ’04. He started the application process to become a private investigator in ’05 as well but never finished.”
“Nothing after 2005?”
“There wasn’t much official information, so I searched around and found a Richmond Times-Dispatch article. A boy was abducted from King’s Dominion on Labor Day weekend that year. The article named the parents as Jackson and Nathalie Clay.”
“Christ.”
“Yeah. I couldn’t find much more on the story besides that article. Records show he divorced Nathalie in ’07. I just sort of assumed the worst. His story seems to drop off after that. Pays taxes on a gray Ram pickup and a property about 40 minutes west of here. Other than that, there’s not much.”
“So, what’s he been doing the last thirteen years?”
Bailey looked at Cole as she replied.
“I can tell you what he’s been doing recently.”
The alleyway flowed into a plaza directly in front of the marina. Bailey had led the two of them to a bench in the middle of the plaza as they talked. Cole looked around. A flag overhead flapped in the wind, harmonizing with the small waves that splashed against the docks. Aside from the breeze, the two of them were completely alone.
“So,” said Cole, “Where is he?”
Detective Bailey punched something into her phone and looked over to a building further towards the river. It was a restaurant, its blue-gray façade blending in with the darkened sky behind it. A set of brick stairs met a white walkway that crossed over to the front doors. She was looking there when a figure emerged from the shadows underneath the walkway.
“There,” said Bailey.
As he walked by an overhead light, Cole got her first look at Jackson no middle name Clay. He was a taller man, athletically built with defined muscles. A ball cap hid most of his face, but she could see a trimmed brown beard that wrapped around the bottom of his face.
“Detective Bailey,” greeted the man as he walked up to them.
“Jackson, good to see you,” said Bailey, returning the pleasantry, “This is Detective Cole. Harrisonburg Police Major Crimes. She’s been on the Parker girl’s case from the beginning.”
The man pulled his right hand out of his pocket and extended it open to Detective Cole.
“Jackson Clay,” said Jackson.
“Angela Cole,” replied Cole.
She pulled out the manila envelope she had tucked under her left arm and handed it to Jackson.
“Here you go,” said Cole.
“These are the relevant case files,” asked Jackson.
“Everything I’ve got,” replied Cole.
Jackson unclasped the envelope, slid the files out, and began to thumb through them.
“You think she was taken from this appliance repair shop parking lot,” asked Jackson.
“Yes, her phone was found there in the parking lot,” answered Cole.
“Could’ve been tossed by those who took her,” asked Jackson.
“It could’ve, but it was found behind the building. Why pull in just to dump the phone?”
Jackson nodded as he continued to flip through the papers. He opened up the section with files on the persons relevant to the case. Scott and Anne Parker. Obviously the parents. Emily Green, Jessica Compton, Katia Thomas, and Kevin Polk. Must be friends or classmates given their birthdates. Then, as he got to the last page, he saw the file of a man who seemed not to fit. The man had a pleasant face with a sanguine smile.
“Who is this Jeff Isaacs,” asked Jackson.
“He’s the head of a local victim’s organiz
ation,” answered Cole, “He’s been working mostly with the family. Checking in on them, taking them to group events. He seems to be familiar with abduction cases in the area. Could be a resource for you to get your lay of the land.”
“Alright,” said Jackson as he put the file away, “Anything else?”
“Nope,” replied Bailey, “That’s about it. Detective Cole’s card is attached to the front of those files. It has her number if you need to reach her. As for me, you know how to get a hold of me.”
“Great,” Jackson said.
Jackson stepped around them and began walking in the opposite direction he had come from. The abruptness of it caught Cole off guard. All this, all she was risking, and that was it. That was the big meeting. A panic fell over her. She felt like she had a hundred more questions to ask. Her brain raced to form words as she watched him walk away.
“Mr. Clay,” Cole managed to say.
Jackson stopped and turned back to look at her. The light from a nearby lamppost caught his face and Cole could see Jackson Clay the man for the first time. She looked into his eyes, brown eyes that were staring back at her. They had an intensity that made her feel uncomfortable.
“I didn’t want to do this at first,” Cole said to him, “A part of me still doesn’t. But I trust Jen. And I want to find this girl.”
Jackson continued to stare at her as if she had more to say. Detective Cole’s mouth was slightly agape, unsure if she had more to say herself, but nothing more came
“I want to find her, too,” said Jackson, “That’s why I’m here.”
Cole paused a moment longer, still searching for what she wanted to say.
“I’m risking a lot reaching out to you.”
Jackson stood there, working out what she was trying to say.
“Did you have something to do with her disappearance,” he asked.
“No, of course not,” replied Cole.
Jackson nodded.
“Then you have nothing to worry about,” he said.
He turned and continued walking towards the far side of the plaza. Cole watched him until he disappeared around the corner of a building. Whatever this was, whatever she’d just started, there was no undoing it now.
27
Jackson slung his axe downward onto the wedge of wood. He hit it dead center, splitting the half log into two quarter pieces that fell opposite ways off his chopping stump, each landing in a pile of similarly cut pieces.
After he had walked back to his truck at the Old Town marina, Jackson had sat in the driver seat skimming over the files again. The entire drive home he thought about Sara Beth Parker and her abduction. He sympathized with Detective Cole, now seeing there wasn’t much in the ways of leads. She had done a good job; better than most detectives he had come across. There just simply wasn’t a lot there. If he was going to find Sara Beth, it would have to start with finding something the authorities hadn’t.
He placed another half log on the stump, stepped back, and swung the axe downwards. This time he hit left of center, creating two perfectly fine albeit different-sized wedges. Jackson sighed, annoyed.
When he’d gotten back to his house, he went over the entire file again, reading over what he’d already read twice, looking for an angle he hadn’t yet seen. He agreed with Cole’s theory that she had been taken from the appliance repair shop parking lot, but it was the fact that apparently no one saw anything that he found interesting. Sara Beth’s phone was found behind the shop. You couldn’t draw a straight line from it to the street. If Sara Beth had been taken at that spot, it was a perfect blind spot to anyone passing by. Whoever took her had to have been lying in wait, he thought. They had known exactly what they were doing.
Jackson walked over and grabbed his canvas firewood carrier. He brought it to the pile of split logs, filled up the sack, and began carrying his fresh-cut firewood over to the pile he’d created by his wood-burning furnace.
Ultimately, the question was whether Sara Beth Parker was targeted or a victim picked at random. Her parents didn’t seem to be exceptionally wealthy and no one that had been interviewed could think of a reason someone would want to harm her. Plus, there was the fact that Sara Beth had apparently never done this before. Her parents had said this was the first time she’d ever left home at night without telling someone first. Someone looking to take Sara Beth couldn’t plan around something she hadn’t done before. Sara Beth must’ve been a victim of opportunity, Jackson concluded. A girl in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like prey struck down by a predator.
A predator, Jackson thought. An idea came to him.
He tossed the canvas sack aside and hurried up the front stairs of his house. He sat down at his laptop and booted it up. He brought up an online sex offender registry and searched around the Parkers’ address.
The greater Harrisonburg area had nearly 150 registered offenders. Jackson wasn’t particularly surprised, but he’d hoped it would be less.
Zooming in on the Parkers’ street, there were two registered offenders on the Parkers’ block alone. He clicked on the one that was towards the direction she had walked. It was a 64-year-old male registered for possession of child pornography. Disturbing, thought Jackson, but not someone likely to subdue and abduct a teenage girl. He zoomed out and clicked on the other pin dot on the Parkers’ block. Russell Daniels was a 34-year-old white male convicted of third-degree sexual battery in ’09.
Jackson grabbed his phone, looking for Detective Cole’s business card, and punched in her number.
“Detective Cole, Harrisonburg Major Crimes,” she answered.
“Cole, it’s Jackson Clay,” he said, “Did you look at a Russell Daniels? 34-year-old registered sex offender on the Parkers’ street.”
“We looked at all nearby registered sex offenders,” Cole replied, “It should be in the information I gave you. Hold on.”
Jackson was patient as he heard papers rustle on the other end of the line.
“His grandmother says he came home at eight that night and never left,” Cole said.
“Are we taking what his grandmother said as gospel,” asked Clay.
“We talked to him, Clay,” Cole replied, “To be honest, he didn’t seem like the type. He and his grandmother even consented to a search of their house. It was clean. I mean, clean clean.”
“Alright, I guess. Thanks.”
“You want to check him out, have at it. But I’m telling you, we looked.”
Jackson ended the call. He rapped his knuckles on the desk as he thought. He had no reason not to believe Detective Cole, but there was something about Daniels. Something bothered Clay as he studied the man’s photo and the pin dot over his address. He lived no more than 8 or 9 houses from the Parkers. It was too much of a coincidence. Maybe Daniels was, in fact, innocent, but Jackson decided he wanted to see for himself.
He grabbed his things and headed out.
28
Two hours later Jackson was parked in a shopping center on the southeast side of Harrisonburg. On the way down, he’d called Detective Bailey and asked her to see if Russell Daniels had a vehicle registered in his name. He did, a 1999 electric blue Honda Civic. When Jackson drove by Daniels’ home address and didn’t see the car, he looked up the work address listed on the sex offender registration.
The address, belonging to a cell phone retailer, brought him to this shopping center across town. Mostly vacant, it hadn’t been hard to spot the blue Civic parked in the corner of the lot. Jackson parked several rows away with a good line of sight on both the store and the car.
He didn’t have Daniels’ work schedule, but the store’s hours online said it would be closing soon. Daniels would more than likely be leaving not long after that.
Watching the store, Jackson pulled out his phone and googled Russell Daniels to see what came up. As a registered sex offender, Daniels wasn’t allowed to have a Facebook account and one didn’t show up. In fact, there weren’t any social media accounts at all. Jackson hit
the news tab on Google, hoping to find an article or report on Daniels’ conviction. No luck. He was curious about the assault. Daniels’ booking information put him at 5’6” and 120 lbs. and his photo made 120 seem generous. He didn’t strike Jackson as the type to overpower someone, though, Jackson wasn’t a 16-year-old teenage girl crossing a dark parking lot.
He sat there for another 40 minutes thinking about this and until, not long after 6 p.m., a man switched the OPEN sign in the front window. Even from half way across the parking lot, Jackson could easily see it was Russell Daniels, his pimply face sitting under a disheveled bowl of black hair. A moment later, Daniels stepped out the front door and locked it behind him. Jackson waited until he was in his car before firing the ignition on his truck.
Keeping a couple cars between them, Jackson followed Daniels. When Daniels stopped at a Taco Bell, Jackson drove past and waited in the parking lot of a Walgreens until he saw the Civic get back on the road. He stayed on Daniels all the way back to his house.
When Daniels pulled into his driveway, Jackson drove past and circled back at the end of the block with his headlights off. He watched Daniels awkwardly balance the greasy paper bag of food and soda cup in one hand, struggling to unlock the door. There was a good chance Daniels was in for the night, but Jackson would sit on the house a couple hours just to make sure.
He slumped back down in his seat, getting comfortable again, and took in the street. Down the street he could see the yard sign with balloons out front, a makeshift memorial to Sara Beth Parker in her own front yard. Russell Daniels lived within shouting distance of her. The Parkers might even know him. Jackson wondered if they knew he’d been convicted as a violent sex offender.
He grabbed his phone and began searching for information on Daniels’ conviction again when the man himself reappeared from behind the house. Side stepping a van parked in the carport, he crossed the front yard and headed down the street, not towards Jackson but in the direction of the Parkers’ home. Jackson felt the hairs on his neck prick up. He waited for Daniels to put some distance between the two of them and then began following him again.
The Woodsman (The Jackson Clay & Bear Beauchamp Series Book 1) Page 10