The Abducted Super Boxset: A Small Town Kidnapping Mystery

by Roger Hayden

  “Where to now?” Murphy asked, slowing down as the car rocked along the jagged terrain.

  “About a half mile down the road,” Sergeant Bennett said. “That’s where they were all set up, ready to storm the cabin. Like I said, I never saw it myself.”

  “What road?” Agent Murphy asked. “We’re blocked off.”

  Miriam looked ahead and saw what he meant. The path narrowed as the overgrowth encompassed it entirely with trees blocking the route, their bark scratched and faded.

  “End of the line,” Agent Pinkerton said as though it was to be expected. She began to talk on her radio, informing the other agents that they’d go the rest of the way on foot.

  Agent Murphy halted to a stop as Miriam observed their surroundings with caution through the tinted windows. The rest of the convoy stopped, kicking an enormous dust cloud into the air. Doors opened from all sides as agents and police stepped outside. Miriam exited the SUV and scanned the woods searching for any clues, but it was all undisturbed nature, with not so much as a footprint.

  Agent Pinkerton looked into the sky where there was the faint whirring of their helicopter and talked into her radio. “Air support, do you see anything?”

  “That’s a negative,” the pilot said. “Still doing a sweep of the area.”

  “Roger. We’re approximately a half mile from our destination but have to continue on foot due to obstruction in our path.”

  “That’s a good copy,” the pilot said as the helicopter grew more distant.

  Agent Pinkerton drew her pistol and signaled to Murphy to get moving. “Okay, team. We’re going to pursue the cabin on foot. Look alive.” She then paused and made direct eye contact with Miriam. “Lieutenant Sandoval, stay close to me.”

  The tactical team began their march over the remnants of a barely visible trail, leaving some police behind to cordon off the area. Miriam walked with Agent Pinkerton, wondering if she felt any connection given that they were the only two women on the scene.

  There were approximately twenty men with them, including a fully-armed SWAT team. Detectives Hayes and Shelton caught up with Miriam as Sergeant Bennett led the way, ducking under branches and pushing through despite the growing challenge of navigating through all of it.

  “Are you sure about the helicopter?” Miriam asked Agent Pinkerton. “We wouldn’t want to alert him to our presence.”

  Agent Pinkerton brushed a stick from her hair and tossed it on the ground. “Of course not. But I feel that aerial support is necessary. We don’t want to be out here all day.”

  “The worst thing we could do is underestimate him,” Miriam said. “He likes to set traps. He likes to play games.”

  “And we’ll be ready for him,” Pinkerton said with confidence.

  Miriam said no more, hoping that Agent Pinkerton was right. The FBI knew what they were doing. They had to. Though a subtle, creeping doubt prevented Miriam from being fully convinced.

  Agent Pinkerton changed the subject with a glance at the engagement ring on Miriam’s finger. “You have a family?”

  “Yes, a daughter and a fiancé.”

  “That’s nice. When’s the wedding?”

  Miriam thought to herself, uncertain. She had left town the morning after his proposal and nothing had even been discussed yet. “Still in the planning stages.”

  “That’s wonderful. I have two children of my own. A son and daughter. Been happily married for seven years.”

  Miriam was impressed. Already a special agent with a family, and Agent Pinkerton didn’t look a day over thirty-five.

  The path thinned out a bit, allowing the team more space to spread out, when Miriam suddenly noticed some slightly exposed tire tracks on the road. “Stop!” she said.

  Pinkerton’s smile dropped as she stumbled to a halt. “What is it?”

  “There,” Miriam said, pointing. She ran off the path, deeper into the woods, and came to a spot where the bushes had been nearly decimated, leaving a small clearing. “There’s tracks leading through here.”

  The team followed her until they finally arrived at a silver Mercedes covered in branches. The collective excitement among the group reached new heights, barely containable.

  “Okay, team,” Agent Pinkerton said. “This is the car we’re looking for. Keep your intervals and watch each other’s backs. He’s close.”

  With a singular purpose in mind, the highly-trained group ventured further into the unknown. The silver Mercedes was all the indication Miriam needed. Trudeau had indeed fled into the woods, returning to the very site of his greatest loss. Though she couldn’t understand why he would ever want to return here, Miriam knew that the cabin held a certain significance—something deep and primal. Given the chance, she wondered if she would kill him. Or was there another way to avoid the inevitable?

  Dangerous Ground

  They continued past a thicket of trees and approached a hill that offered little to no indication of the way forward. There were no paths in sight and no sounds or direction to guide them. Miriam imagined them walking the forest for hours before they found anything at all. That, however, was a luxury they couldn’t afford.

  Agent Pinkerton led the large group up the hill, when Miriam paused to examine the way ahead with her binoculars. Panic seized her as she saw the faint glimmer of something inches off the ground: long, thin wire, tied to the base of one tree to another, and it was everywhere.

  “Wait!” she said, lowering her binoculars, with one fist in the air.

  Agent Pinkerton and Agent Murphy stopped and signaled for the team to take a knee. Farther up the hill, Miriam could see more fishing wire, barely visible and carefully tied from the base of one tree to another.

  “He’s got trip wire everywhere,” she said. “We need to watch our step. Limit our numbers so no one sets it off.”

  “She’s got a point,” Agent Murphy said to Pinkerton. “Who knows what kind of traps he’s got out here.”

  “Right,” Agent Pinkerton said, turning to the team. “I need the SWAT team up here. Everyone else stay in position!”

  Detective Hayes and Shelton remained in place, confused for a moment among the other detectives. “That means all of you need to watch our backs,” Pinkerton continued. The message was clear: FBI and SWAT only. She told them that she’d call for backup if she needed them.

  She then pointed to Miriam and Sergeant Bennett and waved them forward. “You two. Move up and stay close.”

  Miriam glanced back at the Detective Hayes and Shelton for guidance. In response, Hayes gave her a thumb’s up, telling her to be careful.

  “Remember, Lieutenant,” Detective Shelton began. “Stay alert, stay alive.”

  Miriam nodded and left the detectives to join the FBI agents with Sergeant Bennett. She looked up the hill and could see that they had little advantage from their position. If Trudeau was up there, he would see everything. She took Sergeant Bennett by the arm and followed Agents Pinkerton and Murphy, forming a single-file line led by the eight-man SWAT team.

  As they moved, the SWAT team raised their fists in the air as they carefully stepped over the trip wire in their path. As she maneuvered around a long stretch of fishing line two feet off the ground, Miriam noticed a rectangular block of explosive tied to the base of a tree. There was no doubt in her mind how serious Trudeau was.

  She also observed Agent Pinkerton and Agent Murphy as they walked ahead. Both were wearing flak vests under their uniforms, the bulkiness of the plates clearly exposed. The SWAT team too. Miriam then realized that she and Sergeant Bennett were the only ones not afforded such protection. They had been overlooked. It had slipped Miriam’s mind as well, and she suddenly had second thoughts about pursuing Trudeau in the dense wilderness.

  They continued farther up the hill, dodging trip wire placed sporadically in their path. The SWAT team suddenly stopped and took a kneeling position with their weapons aimed forward. Miriam looked ahead and saw a cabin much smaller and unassuming than she had imagined, a
mong the trees and shaded by camouflage.

  Sergeant Bennett moved beside her, crouching low and out of breath from their quick movement up the hill. “I can’t say if it’s the one for sure,” he began between heavy breaths. “But there’s a cabin ahead.”

  Miriam took a knee next to him and looked through her binoculars. “Looks like the perfect hideout to me.” Agent Pinkerton and Murphy were farther ahead, joining up with the SWAT team as Miriam and Sergeant Bennett remained carefully behind.

  “We forgot vests,” she said.

  Bennett looked at her curiously and then smiled. “Suppose we just wait back here and see what happens.”

  Miriam placed a hand on his shoulder and stood, still low to the ground. “I wish I could, Sergeant, but I can’t let them make the same mistake twice.”

  She stepped over another line of trip wire and caught up to the FBI agents, watching as the SWAT team spread out and took concealed positions roughly a hundred feet from the cabin. Miriam examined the cabin with her binoculars again and saw no movement through the windows. Beyond the chair and table by the front door, there weren’t any signs of occupancy. It looked like nothing more than a run-down cabin in the middle of woods, long abandoned and forgotten about.

  “Remain in position,” Agent Pinkerton said to the leader of the SWAT team through her radio. “Don’t make a move until we say so.”

  Miriam rushed past the FBI agents and took cover behind the nearest tree, closer to the cabin than before. She knelt and watched as the SWAT team remained in their crescent formation with their rifles steady and aimed directly at the cabin. With their helmets and vests on, they looked like riot police. Their grenadier readied his launcher, loaded with tear gas grenades. The mere sight of him caused Miriam a moment of unease.

  The team lay in wait as everything went quiet. Not a sound came from the cabin. The whirring of the FBI helicopter remained a distant echo. Birds chirped and fluttered from the trees and lizards moved through the sheet of dead leaves on the ground. The tranquil peace of the forest mesmerized Miriam, and for a moment, she couldn’t believe that they were in any danger at all.

  The unassuming quiet in the air suddenly vanished in an instant as gunshots fired from inside the cabin, shattering a window out, bullets striking the ground near the SWAT team. Miriam dropped flat on her stomach as the rounds kicked up dirt around her. She could hear Agent Pinkerton shouting to the team to hold back. The gunfire didn’t seem to be aimed at anyone in particular. The unseen shooter appeared to be sending a message.

  The SWAT team inched forward, with the cabin closer in their sights. Miriam watched from the ground and looked toward the broken window for a glimpse of the shooter. He took cover and then rose up again, firing randomly into the air.

  “Stay back!” the shooter shouted. “Come one inch closer, and you’ll be sorry!”

  Miriam raised her head and recognized Trudeau’s panicked face right before he ducked down behind the window pane for cover. He had seen them despite their cautious advance. She knew April was somewhere in the cabin and that the girl’s life was hanging in the balance. Everything they did from that moment on would mean everything.

  The SWAT team waited in position as Agent Pinkerton rushed ahead and flew to the ground next to Miriam, frazzled and out of breath.

  “Hold,” she said into her radio. “I repeat, do not engage until given specific direction to do so.”

  Miriam looked at Agent Pinkerton with gratitude, prepared to thank her for holding the SWAT team back, when Pinkerton gripped her shoulder and stared into her eyes fiercely.

  “Who told you to advance?”

  “I’m sorry?” Miriam said.

  “You’re supposed to stay by my side. You don’t advance until I say so. Got it?”

  “Yes, Agent Pinkerton,” Miriam said.

  Lying on her stomach, Agent Pinkerton brushed off leaves from her shirt and then reverted her focus back at the cabin, her pistol aimed toward the window. In the silence that followed, she seemed to have a change of heart as she gave the next command. “If you have a shot, take it.”

  Miriam looked at her, surprised at the directive, but not wanting to interfere.

  “I thought you wanted me to talk to him?” she asked Pinkerton.

  Before she could answer, Agent Murphy ran up from behind and plopped down next to them, short of breath and taking cover behind a stack of firewood. “Where is he?”

  “In the cabin,” Pinkerton said. “Could be Trudeau or some other nut.”

  “Well…” Agent Murphy said. “What are we waiting for?”

  Pinkerton turned to Miriam and grudgingly made the offer. “Is there anything you can say to him? Talk him down, perhaps? Maybe get him to release the girl?”

  Miriam thought to herself, hesitant but certain that there had to be a way. She had traveled all this distance, not just from Trudeau’s ranch house, but from her house in Phoenix, just to be here, fifty feet from the cabin of Trudeau’s last stand. The road had brought her here—every decision she had made from first arriving in Odessa until now—it all added up to this moment.

  She was no expert negotiator, but there had to be some way to convince him to release April. In the end, it was a gamble she had to take, even if it meant risking her own life. Lou was right to be worried. For the first time, Miriam felt that she might not make it out of the standoff alive.

  Three of the eight SWAT team members low-crawled toward the cabin, steadily closing in.

  She saw Trudeau’s head rise again, angered by their gradual advancement. “Stay back!”

  The three SWAT officers froze, rifles aimed upward a good ten feet from his cabin.

  “Just one more move, and so help me God, I’ll kill us both right now!” he continued, his voice strained from shouting.

  Miriam pushed herself up and stood out in the open with her hands up in the air. Agent Murphy lunged toward her legs to pull her down, only to be held back by Agent Pinkerton, who had already given Miriam her blessing to proceed.

  “Dr. Trudeau! It’s Miriam.” She took a few steps toward the cabin as her heart pounded within her chest. “Let’s talk. Just you and me!”

  He smashed the remainder of the broken glass out of the window with the butt of his pistol and shouted back, “Why’d you come here, Miriam? Are you trying to be a hero?”

  “No,” she said with slow steady movements. “I’m here for April.”

  She walked past the crouching SWAT team and glanced at the nearest grenadier holding up his weapon, prepared to fire inside the window.

  “Let me talk to him first,” she told the officer in a quiet but forceful tone. “There’s a child in there.”

  “Let her go,” Agent Pinkerton said through his radio. “But stay alert and ready to take him out if need be.”

  Trudeau peeked out skeptically from the window as Miriam walked slowly toward the front door.

  “How about it, Dr. Trudeau. Can we talk?” Miriam asked, standing near his shattered kitchen window with her hands up.

  Trudeau gave no response as he moved away from the window. She heard his footsteps walk across to the front door. He opened it, pistol aimed at her, and beckoned her inside.

  She walked along the cabin and turned inside as he slammed and locked the door behind her. Miriam searched the room with her eyes. There was no sign of April, but she did see a closed bedroom door beyond the kitchen.

  “Keep those hands up high,” Trudeau demanded.

  Miriam faced him, arms up and exposing the pistol on her belt below her jacket.

  “You came in here armed?” he asked.

  She could see the discolored sweatiness in his face and noticed that he was having trouble keeping his balance.

  “I want you to take slowly take your pistol and set it on the floor. One slick move, and I’ll put a bullet between your eyes.”

  Miriam lowered her right arm and pulled her pistol from its holster, kneeling to set it on the ground.

  “Now kick it
over to me,” he said with his balance wobbling. His face was pale and sweaty, and he looked in constant pain. She wondered how long he was willing to live out here in the frail condition he appeared to be in.

  Miriam gave her pistol a tap with the tip of her boot and sent it sliding across the dusty, wooden floor, inches from Trudeau’s grasp.

  “You’re a very naïve woman,” he said, reaching down. He rose and limped toward Miriam, wincing with pain as he stuffed her pistol in the back of his jeans. He then pointed his pistol inches from her head as she backed against the nearest counter next to a tiny propane stove where a thick iron pan rested.

  Miriam turned and looked to the bedroom. “Is she in there?”

  “Who, April?” he asked, unflinching. “You know she is, Miriam, and I’m sure you’d like to talk to her.”

  Miriam made a slight movement away from the counter, only to feel the barrel of his pistol against her forehead.

  “Not another move!”

  Arms up, she pleaded with him. “There’s a SWAT team outside, ready to tear this place apart. They will kill you. Don’t you see that? Don’t you see what you’ve become?”

  His wild eyes darted to the shattered window by the kitchen sink as he said nothing in return. But there seemed to be a certain understanding, nonetheless.

  “You have to surrender, Dr. Trudeau. April is not your daughter, and she never will be.”

  He looked up with a certain acknowledgment, but his recalcitrant stance remained. “Why did you come here? Can’t you let us live in peace? I-I admit what I did was wrong, but they had it coming. The whole damn town did!”

  Miriam carefully lowered her right arm and pulled out a picture of Anabelle from her pocket, holding it for him to see.

  “This was your daughter. Can’t you imagine how frightened she was back then? How her captor held a gun to her head and did the unthinkable? No one other than him was to blame. Not the police. Not you or your ex-wife. Only one man, Willie Malone. And now, you’ve become that man.”