The Criminal Mind

by Thomas Benigno

  “I’ll be more than happy to fill you both in, but let’s order a pizza first,” Paul replied. “I’m starving.”

  It had suddenly occurred to me that neither of us had remembered to eat dinner.

  “I’m fine,” said Charlie. “I had a calzone delivered, and even better, when the delivery man saw me, he wouldn’t take my money.” Charlie reached into his pocket and handed Paul a torn piece of paper. “Here’s the number. And tip him good, because I sure as hell didn’t.”

  Paul called in the order and we moved to a conference room behind the lobby’s huge centrally located fireplace. Before I sat down, I checked my phone. Though there was no ring tone, I could see that a call was coming in. It was Charlotte’s number, but it was Maureen calling. I stepped away to answer it.

  “How are you feeling? Is Charlotte showing you around?” I asked.

  Despite my upbeat tone, hers wasn’t. “I’m just fine, and Charlotte is great. She took me out to dinner and tomorrow we’re going to a Broadway show. But Nick...”

  “You sound worried. What is it?”

  “I called the hospital to see if anyone found my phone, but it seems to have disappeared.”

  “Is that what’s bothering you? Just get another one. Use the cash I gave you.”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “I miss you. That’s all.”

  “I miss you, too. And I wish I could tell you how long I’ll be up here, but I can’t.”

  “And that Detective McCormick…I called him too. I just don’t think he’s doing all he can to find out who broke into my apartment. I’m not sure I trust him.”

  “That’s probably just his way. Besides, what does it matter? You’re in New York and safe. And I’m sure your phone will turn up. Meanwhile, call your carrier and report it lost.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, let’s talk tomorrow. Our pizza should be arriving soon, and I haven’t eaten all day. Now get a good night’s sleep. You’ll feel better.”

  “I will.” She sounded disappointed that our call was coming to a close, which broke my heart a little. After a few seconds of silence, she uttered: “Talk tomorrow. Love you.”

  Then, as if I had said it a thousand times before, I whispered back: “Love you, too.”

  Since I was closest to the lobby door, I accepted the pizza delivery, walked back into the conference room, and laid the pie on a large mahogany table.

  “You’re blushing,” Charlie said.

  “Must be the phone call with his girlfriend.” Paul said.

  “You can both go to hell,” I barked back. “Now tell us what you found, Paul, while I still have my appetite.”

  “First, let me find the photos,” he said, taking out his phone and waving us closer. “Here it is.” He widened the image on the screen with his fingers. “See that tire track?” He looked at me, then at Charlie. “See the indentation in the shoulder where it meets the grass? It’s from the tire spinning out slightly. In other words—the driver left in a hurry. But now: Let’s look at the markings where the vehicle first came to a stop. You can see the tire more clearly. It’s a common tread, probably from an SUV. Now let’s look at another photo of the same tire after it moved forward a bit.” Paul swiped his cellphone’s screen a few times.

  I looked closely at the image he stopped at. “Why are there only partial tread marks?” I asked.

  “Because there may be something caked on to the tire,” Paul responded.

  “You mean like mud––hardened mud?”

  “Either that, or the tire has a bubble.” Paul said.

  “But how do we even know that the vehicle we’re talking about has anything to do with the missing boy?” Charlie asked. “Someone could have just taken off after they pulled over to piss.”

  “I can’t be positive, but these look like fresh tracks,” Paul said. “When no one was looking, I knelt down to get a closer look and felt the ground to be sure.”

  “Then wash your hands before you touch our pizza,” Charlie barked.

  Paul continued. “And don’t you think it was a little unusual that big mouth Deputy Carter let me get so close to the bicycle—especially after he warned me not to disturb the crime scene? I actually walked right up to it and he couldn’t give a damn. Who lets a private investigator do that?”

  “So, what are you saying?” Charlie asked.

  “That the investigation into this missing boy is all that we saw and heard, which amounts to next to nothing,” Paul said firmly.

  “You mean they’re just going through the motions?” I asked.

  “I’d put money on it,” Paul said. “Oh, I’m sure they’ll be reports filed that document how they canvassed the town, questioned a dozen or so people, et cetera et cetera. They’ll file a bunch of photos of the scene, of course. Then…case closed. Another kid bites the dust.”

  “What about the public?” I asked. “Doesn’t anyone care?”

  “There’s a local paper––The Cartersville Courier,” Paul answered. “It hasn’t publicized a serious crime committed up here in decades. It could pass for a travel brochure for all anyone knows.”

  “That makes no sense,” Charlie said angrily.

  “I thought the folks in Upstate New York were supposed to be honest God-fearing people,” I said.

  “I guess not everywhere in Upstate New York,” Paul responded with a sly smile.

  I was dozing off to sleep when at 1:00 a.m. my cellphone rang. It was Lauren calling. “Sorry…I know it’s late, but I’ve got more on that Upstate matter we’ve been talking about.” She was all business and sounding more like the Lauren I remembered.

  “Don’t be sorry.” I widened my eyes and shook off the cobwebs. “I’m here in Cartersville and I want to hear everything you’ve got.”

  “What do you mean you’re in Cartersville? Why didn’t you tell me you were going? I could have gotten a camera crew and joined you.”

  “Thanks for the offer, but that’s the last thing we need up here in Small Town, USA. It’s going to be hard enough to get people to talk to begin with.”

  “Forget the cameras,” she said. “You could have introduced me as another investigator on your team. Just leave out the reporter part.”

  “You are on my team, whether you like it or not. I wouldn’t be lying.”

  “I’m going to tell my program manager that I’m going on assignment. I want to come up there.”

  “Come then. You should be here. There’s no one I trust more, and—like I once said—we’re the same, you and I.”

  “Oh God, early morning sappy. I can tell you just woke up.”

  I was twice Lauren’s age, yet I was convinced that I understood her better than she understood herself. Broken home. Abandoned by her biological father. Molested by her stepfather. Though I had suffered through an ass-kicking or two by my own stepfather, it was the knowledge of my mother’s protracted childhood abuse by her oldest brother that affected me deeply and made me feel connected to Lauren in more ways than one.

  Never one to mince words, Lauren quickly got to the purpose of her call. “According to my research—and I pulled every newspaper article, census, and death record I could find—young boys have been going missing in and around Cartersville since the mid-1950s, and almost all of them had resided in orphanages and foster homes, with no records of who their parents were.”

  “What about the kid whose bicycle was found by the roadway?” I asked.

  “I just read about that. He’s an anomaly—living at home with a natural mother and stepfather. You know, it could be that he is not a victim of the same serial kidnappers.”

  “Serial kidnappers? You really think there’s more than one?”

  “Neither of us need a lesson on good and evil,” Lauren said morosely. “Over fifty years, there
has to be—and this is based on records I actually found—some that even predate the Kennedy assassination. There’s no telling how many young boys actually went missing who there is no record of. Let’s face it: One horrible human being cannot be responsible for all these missing boys.” Lauren sounded much too certain for my comfort level. “But we need more,” she continued. “More proof—and not just from legitimate sources. If at all possible, we need to hack the cyber underground. Have you heard of the dark web?” I instantly thought of Jasmine, Paul’s computer hacker genius.

  I told Lauren that I had indeed heard of the dark web, and when I asked her to fully explain its implications to me, she did so in a rather colorful but precise narrative. “The dark web is both cunning and diabolical. Astonishingly, thousands of hackers engage in keeping a segment of web traffic totally confidential. They volunteer their time to provide hidden cross chains and complex avenues of web travel so that tracing the identity of users is virtually impossible—and I mean that literally. This is done largely over a network called TOR, which is an acronym for “the onion router”—a program developed by the U.S. Navy for government use in the 1990s. In 2004, it was open sourced. Put simply, it went public. Normally, when you connect to the internet, your IP address is your source identity—but when you’re on the dark web, the browser takes a few circuitous routes with at least three random detours that causes your web search to bounce around the world like a pinball knocking in and out of random networks. As a result, this makes your site request work, but your source address virtually untraceable. In short: The dark web is a perfect vehicle for criminals to traffic in, especially if their crimes are against children.”

  Since there was no keeping Lauren away, she flew in the following morning and joined us at The Red Mill Inn. We were sitting in the corner of the lobby when she arrived and immediately handed me an envelope. In it were notarized doctor/patient privilege waivers signed by ‘Mia Langley, formally known as Mia Archer.’

  “How did you get this done so fast?” I asked.

  “Network news lawyers don’t sleep. The minute they sent these to me, I called Mia. She had already heard from Charlie and couldn’t have been more cooperative. She met me at CNN headquarters, so I made her day by giving her a tour of the studio. Some of my co-workers even thought she was my little sister. We went out to dinner afterwards. She’s a sweetheart, and smart as all hell. We really took to each other.”

  “Wow, that’s great to hear,” I said. “Charlie here is also quite taken with her. I met her just once, but I could tell she was special.”

  “She’s just great,” Charlie added. “Been to war and back like me, poor kid, and hasn’t lost any of her wholesome innocence.”

  “Also like you, right Charlie?” I chuckled.

  “Oh, yeah. Wholesome and innocent…that’s me.” Charlie smiled back and sarcastically nodded in assent.

  “Just one thing,” Lauren said. “Mia told me not to expect any cooperation from her adoptive mom, Beatrice Langley.”

  “No surprise there,” I said.

  “Tough shit on her,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah, but I have a feeling she’s a force to be reckoned with,” Lauren said.

  “Well, so are we,” Charlie exclaimed. “So are we.”

  Paul then suggested that our next step should be to canvas the town, speak to the residents, and see what we could find out. We discussed this door-to-door strategy for almost an hour. Convinced that the police would be of no help and one deputy, in particular, could not be trusted, we decided to take it to the streets on our own. In doing so, we knew word would quickly get out about our investigation. Consequently, this was a dangerous move––dangerous for all of us. What we were counting on was that someone with a conscience would speak his or her mind, one-on-one and in confidence—whether it was to a journalist, a private investigator, a disabled marine veteran, or even a retired lawyer—and maybe, just maybe, a cage would be rattled and we would get a peek under the cloak of evil behind what appeared on its face to be decades of kidnapping and murder.

  We agreed to spread out in different directions, which wasn’t hard to do in a small town like Cartersville. I took the north side, Paul the south, Lauren the east and Charlie the west. In his Marine fatigues and wheelchair, Charlie was determined to go toe-to-toe with all of us in questioning as many inhabitants as he came across. Even though we were already on the west side, I feared that him going out on his own, pumping his wheels from house-to-house, and in some instances up and down driveways, would be too much for the seventy-two-year-old. When Paul suggested that Charlie team up with one of us, however, we all bore witness to one angry vet tirade. Having calmed down a full half-hour later, Charlie compromised and let Paul drive him to a highly-concentrated area where he would have less wheeling around to do. Paul also gave him a stack of PI business cards and told him to introduce himself as an employee of Franklin Investigations, which was Paul’s PI firm located on Franklin Avenue in Garden City, Long Island.

  Charlie seemed pleased to be part of the team, and I couldn’t help but respect his independence and strong will. I only hoped (and prayed) that he would come back in one piece. That he tended to be cantankerous and feisty is an understatement, and I was not looking forward to possibly dealing with one of his post-traumatic episodes. We would all soon realize, however, that despite all our well-placed concerns, we underestimated both Charlie and Cartersville—the latter of which wasn’t necessarily a positive.

  Since we were all carrying our cellphones, we each agreed to call if any of us were even remotely in any kind of trouble. Where Lauren and Charlie were concerned, Paul and I made them promise that if they felt the least bit uncomfortable, they were to reach out immediately. Though I believed Lauren would, I wasn’t so sure about Charlie. He actually scoffed at the notion.

  This broad canvas approach to investigating was not something I was entirely comfortable with. Paul disagreed and said so. “We’re focusing our attention on this town and its people. There is no doubt that there are those who know something, but are either too afraid or simply don’t care enough to speak out. You don’t have this number of kids go missing and its citizens not know something is awry. So, we’re going to shake this town’s goddamn tree, and see what falls out. And believe me, something will. Hopefully, it’s something we can use.”

  The instant I was out of Charlie’s line of sight, I took Paul aside. “We’re letting a Vietnam veteran with PTSD out alone on these streets to inquire about kidnapping and maybe murder?”

  “First of all, he’s only asking questions, and these streets cannot be more dangerous than the streets of New York City. Let’s not forget that Charlie’s been on his own for his entire adult life. He may be a little rough around the edges—”

  “A little rough around the edges?”

  “He’ll be fine. Besides, you’re the one who brought him. You tell him he needs a babysitter. I tried that and look where it got me. By the way, have you seen his arms? I bet he can press two-hundred-plus from that chair. Now let’s not worry about Charlie and see what we can shake out of this one-horse town.”

  Since Lauren had her own rental car, before she headed east, she dropped me on the north side in an area comprised mostly of residential homes on plots of land that ranged from as small as a quarter-acre to as large as five acres, some of which abutted the Seneca River.

  The balance of the morning passed slowly, but by noon Paul had already stopped at over three dozen homes where, for the most part, people were polite—yet cautious. When I checked in with Lauren, she informed me that her efforts thus far had been for naught. As for me, after several hours of ringing doorbells to no avail, I was becoming increasingly frustrated. Consequently, my patience was running thin.

  I continued to question this tactic of Paul’s and I called him to tell him so. “Foolhardy and somewhat reckless” was how I referred to this method of scattergu
n investigating.

  He took no offense. “Standard police work up here, however incomplete or incompetent it may have been, has thus far turned up nothing,” he said. “We need to go a bit rogue and see what happens.”

  I had no doubt that Paul had done his homework and knew Cartersville better than any of us, including Charlie, who hadn’t been back in over fifty years. But his approach to investigating what appeared to be the most chronic and prevalent case of missing children in the country—and maybe the world—was unconventional and even odd, to say the least. Every case is different and has its difficulties, and based on Paul’s track record, I should have had more faith in his judgment and choices. But my head was spinning that morning. My thoughts drifted from crates of bones to the dark web to Billy’s downed bicycle. This bucolic small town with the river running through it, its acres of green grass, its quiet homes set back hundreds of feet from the road was beginning to seem like a bleak and disturbing place that I was wandering aimlessly and dangerously through.

  So, no matter what Paul said, I was becoming increasingly convinced that canvassing this small town in Upstate New York was one useless venture.

  But I would soon come to realize that I was wrong.

  Paul drove his own rental car to the south side of town––the low-income area of Cartersville—where, during his random door-to-door investigation, he inadvertently ran into the charming ex-wife of the arrogant and obnoxious Deputy Carter.

  When she pushed the screen door open, Paul knew he would be getting an earful, but about what, he had no clue. Standing before him in her bare feet and smiling, was a petite blond who wore a white nighty that barely reached halfway down her thighs.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked in a sexy tone that was clearly an invitation to more than just casual conversation.