by Willow Rose
“She’s just from another generation,” I said, remembering my old ripped jeans back in the nineties that my mom would look at with a grunt.
“You mean she’s old,” Christine said.
“Yes, she’s old. And maybe she’s a little weird, but give her a chance, please? She’s the only family we have right now, and we should cherish her. Who knows how long she’ll be around? We’ll regret it later on in life if we don’t make the best of what we have with her.”
“Did you read that off Facebook or something? Besides, we do have other family. We have Dad, and his mother is our grandmother too. And she’s not so weird.”
That shut me up. I had always loved Chad’s mother and had to admit that I missed her terribly now that I wasn’t with her son anymore. I had more than once wanted to pick up the phone and call her and ask her for advice these past six months when my life was in ruins, but then stopped myself, realizing that she wasn’t my mother-in-law anymore, that we weren’t family anymore. The thought almost made me tear up.
“Yeah, well, they’re all in Washington,” I said, trying to sound diplomatic and not blame Chad any more than necessary. I had long ago decided I wasn’t going to be that kind of an ex. I wasn’t going to say bad stuff about him to the children. He was their father, and they adored him, and I wanted them to keep liking him. But it was a fine line that was easily crossed, I had learned. Especially since I was still so angry at him for leaving me like that, without even a warning, and for cheating on me, of course. “They’re not around right now. So, try and make the most of Grandma, okay? Play a board game with her or maybe cards? And try to include Alex. He doesn’t have many friends yet, and I worry about him being lonely.”
“You worry about him being lonely? What about me?” Christine said, almost whining. “I hate all the girls in my school. There’s no one I like here. I miss all my old friends, and I miss Dad.”
Ouch.
“I know you do, sweetie. I know you must miss him a lot,” I said as Chris Cooper approached Matt’s desk. Chris Cooper was another detective at CBPD and also an old friend from school. He looked serious first at me, then Matt. I held up a finger to let him know I’d be right there.
“Do you want to go up there soon?” I asked. “I can call him and ask?”
She went quiet.
“Christine? Why don’t you want to go up there lately? Did something happen?” I asked. “You haven’t been up there in almost three months. Don’t you want to see your father?”
“I want to see him, Mom. I miss him; it’s just…” she said.
“Listen, I’ll call him today and ask, okay?” I said, trying to end the call. “I’ll call and ask him when you can go see him again.”
“Okay,” she said, almost in a whisper. I could tell she was sad and needed to chat more, but I didn’t have the time right now. It broke my heart. I wanted to know what was going on.
“We’ll talk more when I come home, Christine, okay?”
“Okay,” she said again and hung up.
I did too, then lifted my eyes and met those of Cooper. He handed us a note. “You need to go to Jane Martin’s house. Her husband called. It was urgent.”
Chapter 27
The Martins lived in a beautiful newly-built riverfront house at the end of our island by the golf course. The husband was a partner in a big local law firm, and I recognized his face from one of the billboards on 520 leading to Orlando, even though he wasn’t smiling the way I was used to. Today, his face was heavyset, and his eyes were burning in anger as he greeted us in the doorway.
“I don’t know who is behind this, but if it is some kind of joke, then I’m gonna...”
“What’s going on, Scott?” Matt said.
“You better see for yourself,” he said. “Come on in.”
“This is my partner, Eva Rae Thomas,” Matt said. “She’s FBI and working the case with me.”
Scott gave me a look, then moved aside so we could come into the big hall. Inside, the house opened up to the most spectacular views of the intracoastal Banana River and the Thousand Islands in the background. Boats were anchored in the distance, probably fishing or going swimming, maybe diving from the rooftops. I remembered my own youth when we always went out to Ski Island and partied with the others from our high school, bringing our coolers with beer and shots. The only life on the islands were snakes and tortoises, and most importantly, there were no police to check for underage drinkers.
We walked to the kitchen where a blonde woman sat on a stool by the counter, crying. In front of her sat a brown package.
“Jane?” Matt said and approached her. She lifted her eyes and spotted him. “What’s going on? Did something happen?”
Jane sniffled and wiped her nose on a Kleenex, then nodded. “I…There was a man at the door, a FedEx guy; he brought me this package. At first, I just thought it was something Scott ordered off of Amazon, or maybe our son did, but my name was on it, so I…opened it.”
Matt nodded. “And what was in it?”
Jane sobbed, then pulled herself together. She reached inside the box and pulled out something. It looked like fabric of some sort. It was red and silky. She held it up so we could see. The golden letters said:
PROM QUEEN 2019
My heart dropped, and I looked at Matt, then back at the mother.
“It’s the sash,” Matt said.
“The one Carina got right before she…disappeared,” Jane said, then broke down again. I walked to her and put my arm around her since the husband didn’t seem to want to. He just stood there like he was paralyzed and stared at the sash on the granite countertop.
“I’ve seen the pictures,” Jane continued. “On Instagram. I’ve been going through them over and over again from that night. All her friends posted pictures from that night. She wore this on the stage when she was crowned, and I never got to see her in it. I would have been so proud. She really wanted to be prom queen since I was prom queen back in the day too. She knew I was going to be so happy for her.”
“If this is someone’s idea of a joke, then I am going to kill them,” Scott said, fuming.
“I don’t think it is a joke, Mr. Martin,” I said, still holding his crying wife. “I think this is very serious. Was there any card with the package?” I asked Jane. She shook her head, and Matt peeked inside the box.
“Nothing in here.”
“And there have been no text messages or emails demanding a ransom or anything like that?” I asked her, then looked up at her husband.
They both shook their heads.
“Nothing,” Jane said and clenched her fists. “What do these people want from us? Why have they taken our poor baby? Why?”
With no ransom request or any demands at all, I had no answer for that. It didn’t fit the MO of a sex offender either. I couldn’t stop thinking about Molly and how on Earth these cases were connected because I was certain they had to be. Four teenagers from the same group of friends couldn’t be a coincidence. But what was this person’s goal?
What did he want?
Looking at the sash at the counter and the tearing up mother, I had a feeling we would find out soon, and it wasn’t going to be pleasant.
Chapter 28
Boomer whistled while he drove down Minutemen Causeway, the town’s small main street. He saw the many police cruisers as they passed him on their way and knew exactly where they were going. Meanwhile, he stopped at a red light at the end of the road, where it met A1A, and he spotted city hall and the police station on the corner.
While he waited, he took a sip of his soda and emptied it, throwing the empty can out the window while thinking about Eva Rae Thomas. He grabbed his phone and looked at the app, tracking her exact whereabouts. Yes, she was there. She was at the address where he had just delivered the sash. Boomer pulled his lips slowly upwards into a smile. It was all going the way he wanted. They were all playing along like the good little dolls they were. But things were moving slowly, he thought.
Too slow. It was about time that he speeded up the events.
Shake things up a little.
That was exactly what he was about to do, he thought to himself as the light turned green and he turned right into the intersection, then hit the brakes and stopped the truck, placing it sideways, so it blocked the entire street. The car behind him honked loudly. Another came around the corner behind it and honked aggressively, but Boomer didn’t listen. He got out of the truck, making sure the cap covered his face for the surveillance cameras, then walked onto the sidewalk. Swiftly, he turned a corner and fell into a crowd of tourists waiting to cross the street. He took off the cap, then followed them, hiding in the crowd as they moved across the street toward the beach, hearing the aggressively honking cars behind him as the traffic was getting completely blocked.
Chapter 29
“I just got off with FedEx,” I said and looked at Matt. He had called for the Sheriff Office’s Crime Scene Unit, and they took the package to the lab to see if they could extract any evidence from it. They were right now working the kitchen and securing the package and the sash.
“They’re trying to track the driver down, but according to their headquarters, there were no deliveries on this street yet today. Not even in the entire area. This address is last on their route and wasn’t scheduled until a few hours from now. But get this. They did, however, have a truck stolen a couple of days ago from their office in Viera on the mainland. Could that have any connection?”
Matt looked at me and exhaled. “I should say so. I just talked to Cooper. You won’t believe this. They found a FedEx truck parked in the middle of A1A in an intersection, right in front of the police station. Someone left it there. It’s blocking traffic. The driver was gone.”
“Don’t let them touch anything,” I said, my eyes growing wide. Things were moving a little too fast for my liking. I felt like I was losing control of the case…like someone was pulling the strings.
“You think it’s our kidnapper, don’t you?” Matt asked. “You think he came here, delivered the package, and then left the truck for us to find; am I right?”
I nodded. “I think he was here. I think he wanted to look at her face when she got the package. He wanted to look her in the eyes.”
“Wow,” Matt said. “That’s sick.”
I swallowed. “I don’t think there is anything well about this guy. Why do you think he left the truck in front of the police station? Because he’s telling us he is in control. There won’t be any fingerprints on it, but he wants us to look for them. He’s toying with us. I don’t have a good feeling about this guy.”
“I’ll call them back and make sure the truck is taken through forensics,” he said. “When I spoke to Cooper, he was still waiting for the tow truck.”
“Okay,” I said pensively, then looked at Carina’s parents, who were sitting on the couch in their living room, barely looking at one another. I approached them, then sat next to Jane. She was staring at her fingers, fiddling with the tissue between them.
“Did you have a good look at the man from FedEx when he was here?” I asked. “Did you see his face?”
She nodded. “Sure.”
“How would you describe him?”
She sighed. “I don’t see why…”
“Just humor me,” I said. “We need to find him.”
“You think it was him; don’t you? You think it was the guy who kidnapped our daughter?” Jane spoke with a quivering voice. Her eyes grew wet, and soon the tears rolled down her cheeks. “You mean to tell me he was…here? He was here at our…our doorstep? The man who took Carina? Our Carina, our daughter?”
“We don’t know if…”
“He was here?” Scott Martin began while rising to his feet “He was here?” he turned to look at his wife. “And you…you did…you did nothing? You just signed and took the package?”
“Please, Mr. Martin,” I tried. “There was no way your wife could have known…”
“No, he’s right. I could have stopped him,” Jane continued. “I could have called the police, and maybe he would lead us to her; am I right? But I didn’t. I just signed the darn thing, took my package, and shut the door. I looked him straight in the eyes and then went on with my day. I looked into the eyes of my child’s kidnapper and…did nothing!”
“You need to calm down, Mrs. Martin,” I said. “We don’t know if it was the same man or not. It could also be someone he paid to give you the package. No matter what, we need to find him. The package you received wasn’t sent via a normal FedEx office. There’s no return address and the guy who brought it wasn’t a FedEx deliverer. What he was, we don’t know, but the truck was most likely stolen, and the guy was someone pretending to be from FedEx. Whether it’s the man we’re looking for or just an accomplice, we don’t know, but we have to find him. He’s our only lead right now. So, please, tell me, what did he look like?”
Jane Martin stared at me, blinking her tears away. Her nostrils were flaring. She glanced briefly at her husband, who was sitting with his head bent to his knees, holding his head like he was afraid it would explode.
“I guess he was…tall, like Matt, about six feet two or so,” Jane said, her voice trembling as she spoke. “He was pretty buff, you know? Maybe from carrying all those packages all day. His hair was blond.”
“Did you look at his eyes?”
As I said the words, a loud blast sounded from outside, and the windows shook slightly. I looked at Matt as the shaking stopped.
“Was there a rocket launch scheduled today?” I asked, remembering those days as a kid when we went outside to watch them be sent off from Kennedy Space Center. Rocket launches were part of our daily life when growing up on the Space Coast.
The couple didn’t seem alarmed either, and Jane continued.
“They were steel grey. And he had very straight teeth. And a beard. Not a big one like a homeless person, or the hipsters, but a small well-trimmed goatee.”
“Anything else? Any tattoos?”
She shook her head. “No. At least none that I could see. He was in uniform. He seemed friendly. Like he knew me.”
“Did you know him? Had you seen him before?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Even though there was something familiar about him.”
Matt approached me. “I need to talk to you.”
As I looked up at him, I realized something was wrong. He was pale, and his eyes were black. I excused myself quickly, then got up and walked with him.
“What’s going on?”
“The truck,” he said, his voice shivering.
“What about it?”
He swallowed. His hands were shaking, and I grabbed one of them. “What’s going on, Matt? Did something happen? Matt? Talk to me. What’s going on?”
Chapter 30
“You’ve got to get that finger further down.”
Carina sat on the mattress next to Ava as she plunged her pointer finger deeper into her throat.
“Hurry up. He’ll be here soon. You’ve got to make it look real,” she urged her. “Try with two fingers if it doesn’t work.”
Ava tried again, this time using two fingers, pressing them into her throat, whimpering as she gagged.
“There you go. It’s working.”
“You can do it, Ava,” Tara said.
Ava gagged, and soon after, yellow bile came out of her, mixed with mostly water. They had let her drink most of what was in the bucket to fill her stomach up enough so she would have something to throw up. They didn’t get much food down here, and the little she usually had wouldn’t yield much. They needed her to throw up more than once.
As Ava gagged again and threw up on the mattress, the stench quickly filled the small room and made the two others feel sick to their stomachs as well.
As steps approached behind the door, they all exchanged a look.
“Here he comes,” Carina whispered. “Just do as we planned. It will work. It has to.”
Ava
whimpered and nodded, then as they heard the bolt on the door open, she closed her eyes and pressed the two fingers down her throat again, and as the masked man entered, she bent forward and threw up once more.
“What the heck…?” he yelled as it landed on the floor in front of him. He sniffed and then held his nose. “What’s that stench?”
“Ava is sick,” Tara said.
“She’s been throwing up all night,” Carina added.
“And she’s been shaking all over. She’s sick,” Tara continued. “I think she’s really sick.”
“She might infect us as well,” Carina said. “Then we’ll all get sick.”
“We might die,” Tara said.
“She needs to see a doctor,” Carina said.
Ava gagged again and threw up, throwing herself forward, so a bunch of it landed right at his feet.
The masked man stared down at Ava, a gun clenched in his hand. He bent down and knelt in front of her, holding his hand up against the surgery mask like he wanted to make sure it was still there to protect him in case she was infectious.
“Are you really sick, little girl?”
Ava gagged, but nothing came up this time. Then she nodded with a sniffle, snot running from her nose.
“She needs to see a doctor,” Carina repeated. “Please, sir. She might die down here if she doesn’t get help.”
“And then we’ll die too.”
Tara looked at Carina like was she asking Too far? But Carina didn’t think it was too much.
“All right,” the man said. “I’ll take you upstairs.”
He leaned over and grabbed Ava’s chain on the bar, then unlocked it with his key. Ava sobbed and cried as he led her out the door, like was she a small dog he was taking out for a walk. As the door slammed shut behind them, both of the remaining girls sat back, sweat springing from their foreheads, silently asking themselves: