Missing

by Nenny May

  “As she should, she’s been a very bad girl; kidnapping those children, torturing them and listening to their helpless scream as she tugged on the loose trigger. And with a bang, a bullet hole was formed. Point blank execution style.” Adam Walker’s features hardened. Did this sick-bastard derive pleasure from this? These were people’s children, they loved these children but this man just had to play God and determine who lives and who dies.

  “Come on now, Hemmings?” Adam tried again, his voice soft.

  “I seem to be running into very smart people lately. Interesting that you’ve figured out my identity before the authorities could. What gave it away, my voice? The good-ol’ charisma of a small-town boy with big dreams? Though I’m tempted to add, this doesn’t win you any bonus points. Ethan Daniels remains with me until further notice.” There was a sense of finality in Hemmings tone that resonated before the line went dead.

  No, no, no, no, no! Madison Miller had already made a full confession, she’d written a statement, and she hadn’t exactly been under direct duress to make that statement. For heaven’s sake, could they get a breather? He hadn’t broken the news to her, but he could just imagine how her face would fall, her heart would wrench and she would shrivel up into a shell of her former self.

  For heaven’s sakes he wanted a goddamn end to it, every damn thing.

  . . .

  “Tucker Miller,” Charlie Wallace slapped a folder onto the single steel table that sat in the middle of the room; that sat between him and Madison Miller. “Murdered at age ten; the poor thing.” He’d watched her with the precision of a lurking predator. From where he’d perched at the other end of the table, he didn’t know what to think of the woman before him. But then again, it wasn’t his job to profile his suspects, now was it? No, the interrogating federal officer thought to himself, it wasn’t his place. And so, he’d blinked the thoughts aside. He couldn’t rip his blazing stare from hers, only, she wasn’t looking at him. With sunken empty eyes of sapphire, she’d stared, leisurely at what seemed to be the first picture of her son she’d seen in a while. Because, thought Wallace, why else would her eyes glint with a rising pond of tears? However, he wasn’t sure whether or not this pond was crocodile infested. “Kidnapped from his bedroom in the dead of the night. Found dead three days later.” He leaned further, a hand shoved into his pants pocket and the other sprawled; his lean and long fingers pressed softly over the file. “Mind telling me a bit of how that made you feel, Miss. Miller?”

  Madison Miller had heard his question. She’d mulled over it, for a minute or two, and in her stomach, a laugh gurgled, one she’d easily suppressed. He wanted to know how her sons kidnap from her Cotswold home made her feel? She could say her world had collapsed, but that would be a lie. It hadn’t, it continued on despite her predicament. Minutes twirled to hours and days. She’d become a burden on a bureaucratic system that in a sense killed her son. But she’d long outgrown casting blames. The question still sat there, at the back of her mind; what if they’d just started the search a little bit earlier? As for Tucker Miller’s murder, she’d learned it was best described as floating on her back in the middle of the ocean. Occasionally, she would feel the lean dread laced fingers of loss and grief wrap around her ankles. It didn’t stop there, it never did, because they would tug her sharp and fast down under. But this time, the ocean water was her memories of her son; their time together. She wouldn’t drown in it like a part of her hoped. No, because as quickly as she’s tugged down under, she’s released and pushed to surface; once more floating on her back in the middle of the ocean.

  “No.” It was okay, Charlie Wallace motioned. Her hesitance was expected, but clearly unwelcome.

  They couldn’t even get a recent picture. A disgruntled Madison Miller deliberated. It shouldn’t have worried her, but it did. With ample resources at their disposal, this is all they could get their hands on to stamp his file? She was wedged, with a whispering voice wondering why a chunk of her concerns dallied on a bad picture of her son when she’d just recently signed away her freedom, most likely her life in a false statement. It was simple really; she knew how much he’d hated the pimples and spots on his face before their dermatologist visit in the spring. She doubted these officers knew that. They’d gone for a picture that showed his face, they’d overlooked other pictures where the lightness of his glimmering heart shone through that toothy-grin of his.

  “Okay. How about I take a guess?” Charlie Wallace pulled away pacing the tinie-tiney barely-lit interrogation room. He stopped at the other side of the table, cleared his throat and returned his attention to the person-of-interest in the kidnapping of Ethan Daniels as well as the murder of the ten other ten-year-old boys that were snatched from Cotswold Elementary. “I think it made you feel broken, lost. You didn’t know what to do with your pain.” Maybe it had been a trick of light, or his eyes—his ophthalmologist did always beg him to return for a check-up—but he’d thought he’d seen her clench her jaw. Was he getting to her? Tugging down her walls one by one? “I think you never properly grieved your son. He was after all just a little boy, and little boys don’t just die. Mothers shouldn’t have to bury their kids. I think you wanted someone else to feel your pain; you wanted mothers in Charlotte to feel your pain.”

  “No!” Madison echoed. “Clive Greene had something to do with Tucker’s murder. Not me, I loved my son. He was my son!”

  “Blame the step-father; classic.” Wallace responded, his voice tinged with dry amusement. “Well then, Miss. Miller, care to explain why you never took the case up with a credible attorney?”

  “We got a divorce.” She hadn’t once over looked the cold sharp feeling that bit into her wrist. It was the silver bracelets they’d forced on her, that kept her bound to the table in the middle of the room.

  She’d had a feeling once. It was one of those itinerant thoughts roused by the ache of Tucker Miller’s passing. She’d remembered it like it was yesterday; Clive hadn’t been home. He’d hardly been around much at the time what with his business trips to Mississippi. To a young Madison Miller, he’d been sourcing for his daily-bread, their daily bread. Sleep was but a taunting memory to a grieving mother; to Madison. And she’d pointed a finger at everyone including her own mother. During this period, everyone around her was a potential killer and all she’d wanted was to know who. And Clive, he’d seemed like the perfect suspect. Certainly, she’d never said it out loud, or thought much of it with the slow-dulling pang of her loss. Why would she, he had in the beginning taken her son in as his own, why would he turn around and kill him? It was clear from what Adam Walker had dug up on Clive Greene’s involvement with Tucker Miller’s passing, her intuition was hardly ever wrong.

  “You wanna’ know what else I think?” Wallace pressed on. “About why you killed those boys that is; I think you picked up those boys because you couldn’t stop wondering what those men had felt putting you through your sons murder. So, ten boys, it made sense. Tucker was ten when he was taken.” Wallace tugged the file away from her. At this, she’d looked up at him, knocked for six. “You weren’t just content with torturing the boys, you sick bitch, so you shot ‘em too.”

  “No!” Madison rose to her feet, well, tried to. She’d been tugged back down by the shackles that sent a blistering twinge through her wrist. The sudden explosion of clicking and clacking metal simmered down after a minute or two, and both were encased in a silence as cold as her wristlets. She couldn’t attack him, he knew this, that didn’t mean he hadn’t been startled enough to reach for his weapon. He had, although he was yet to tug it out from his belt.

  “And why Ethan?” Wallace wanted to know. He straightened, rather adjusting the hem of his blazer. “Those ten boys weren’t enough? You wanted a grand murder, to recreate Tucker’s murder?”

  “I would never hurt a child!”

  “Then tell me the why the hell your plans to release Ethan Daniels have gone South? Still got your guy on the outside taking orders from you?”
Wallace barked, eyes bulging. She seemed taken aback by his outburst, frightened even. He winced. His therapist wasn’t going to be too happy with this week’s feedback. Well neither would Spencer Black. For Pete’s sakes, Black had warned him! He filled his lungs with air and slumped into the only other seat in the room. It groaned beneath his weight.

  His anger, at the situation, at her, ebbed to a gradual nothingness and soon both were cocooned in a calm before Madison had said; “I lied.” She seemed to force it, her words through her teeth. He was tugged from his burdened thoughts. She was still yet to meet his glare. She couldn’t seem to tear her eyes from her hands beneath the table, one cuffed to keep her in place and another resting tauntingly free on her lap.

  “What do you mean you lied? Lied about what exactly?” Wallace swallowed, hard; there still remained a certain tightness in his chest. “He was never releasing the boy was he?” What if this lead, this Alexander Hemmings character she’d painted was a mere hoax? An innocent man she’d stumbled upon and decided in that cunning and calculated mind of hers to pin her heinous murders on. He wouldn’t be the first guiltless city-dweller she’d ensnared into her criminal web.

  Madison Miller huffed. “He didn’t keep his word, and neither should I.” She mumbled, gradually running her tongue over her bottom lip. Just how crazy was this woman? Wallace thought to himself. He without a doubt would bring in psychologist Daniel Moor if this woman continued in this conduct. At least Spencer Black would pardon his slip up if he could prove she’d been loony enough to manipulate him. “My statement, my confession; it was a lie. A cover-up.” Charlie Wallace groaned. He had his answer, she was all sorts of messed up in the head. She’d been under no direct influence to alter her statement; her official statement. And now, she wanted him to believe what exactly?

  Madison released a melancholic sigh. She’d had a tête-à-tête with Paige Quinn earlier in the day. She’d been stirred to a thrilling wake with Adam Walker’s presence in tow. Dancing on the topic of a slumber, she hadn’t gotten a wink of it. But when she’d spotted that familiar warm face of his, it had felt like there’d been a flare in her brain... the good kind, and she’d been awoken, yearning to listen to the heart-warming reunion of a lost son and shattered mother. She’d been agonizingly disappointed. They’d rather brought to her comprehension that there wasn’t much that could be done in regards to her case. She was fine with that. She’d found comfort in the breast of Ethan’s return. Alone in her holding cell perfumed with the stench of her own urine, she’d casted herself as Lauren Daniels joined once more with her son, and in a way, it had given her a sense of reassurance with her decision.

  “A cover-up for what?” He could feel it, his patience wearing thin. But he’d made enough progress with therapy, with his temper. He could get through this.

  “Who.” She corrected. “Alexander Hemmings. He’s been calling me, since the night of the break-in at the Daniels Cotswold home.”

  “Calling to say what exactly?”

  “To threaten me,” Wallace didn’t know what to make of his decision to see this woman. He’d already gotten a statement, that was all he’d needed, and yet, he’d found himself back in the tiney-tiny interrogation room with her; almost trying to make sense of things. In her voice, he’d heard genuine fear, but in her actions, he saw a cold-blooded child killer and, it wouldn’t be the first time one of those had tried shedding a few empty tears to escape a death sentence. “Make me do things that I didn’t want to do, just so he could return Ethan.”

  “Why didn’t you report the calls?” He tossed open the file.

  “I did. When they’d first started. And then, he found out and... I stopped going to the police.” Wallace was on the fence, he had his feet dangling on either side, because he’d been briefed of her report with Concord Mills. She wasn’t lying, at least about this.

  “You said he’d threatened you to do things, what kind of... er’ things?”

  “Lie, get rid of a body.”

  “Tell me more about the body?” He asked referring to the late Pedro Sanchez they’d tugged from Briar Creek. She chuckled.

  “Collateral damage. I wanted proof that Ethan was unharmed and that man, that innocent cab man just happened to take me there and Hemmings shot him.”

  “And I’m just supposed to believe you?” He’d done that once and he’d found himself back at square one with a helpless child still at large.

  “I’m not asking for you to believe me. I made a statement that’s probably going to keep me in here till the day I die. I don’t care about that because I did it with the hope that it would help a poor frightened Ethan Daniels.”

  “But it didn’t help him.” Charlie Wallace clarified.

  “So it seems.” Madison leaned forward in her seat, her eyes latched to his. “It’s all up to your team, Officer Wallace. I no longer have contact with Hemmings, with Ethan.”

  . . .

  Chapter Fourteen

  T he music thumped loud, just enough to make Spencer Black’s skin tingle. It was the music, and not whatever child’s play the girls he’d hired for the night were doing. He’d long lost the lustre of coiling up in a private booth, sniffing up whatever white-powder the girls had tucked up in their little panties and running back to the night he’d caught his wife of three-years in bed with his colleague. He’d remembered that night too many times to count. And with each slow grind of a nameless barely-clothed girl on his hard crotch, he was back there; at the door to his room, red in the face with a rage that burned from the inside out. Janice Black sat up scarcely covered up by their silk sheets. “It’s not what it looks like, Spencer.” She’d stuttered his name. At that moment, he’d looked at the woman that once made his heart bulge with affection, and he saw a stranger. A Janice Black he didn’t want to recognize.

  “Then please, my love, tell me, what it looks like because I sure as hell don’t want to believe what I’m seeing.” And then, he saw him. Charlie Wallace.

  “I knew I’d find you here.” Spencer’s eyes fluttered open and despite the odd lighting in the room, he recognized the famer-turned-officer physique of his colleague from too long ago. They’d moved past that night, the night Wallace had shattered his trust, but that didn’t mean Spencer didn’t return there, to stir an ache in his own chest. “Change of plans. The boy isn’t being returned as Miss. Miller had us believe.”

  “You idiot!” Spencer barked, loudly. One of the two girls he’d booked for the night stared startled at him. “What er’ you looking at sweet cheeks? Get your girlfriend here and ya’ll take five.” Spencer tucked a clean hundred dollar bill into the c-cup of her neon-green bra. His eyes trailed her fluttering behind as she and her partner sauntered through the red velvet curtains and out of the private room he’d reserved for the night. “I told yer that chick was scheming something. I’ve learned well enough to never trust your back-stabbing ass.”

  “It’s not what it looks like.”

  “I’ve heard that one before.” Spencer reached for a cigar on the table by his foot.

  “Went back to speak with her and she has me believing Hemmings could be working alone.”

  “Again with this Hemmings person. Your tiny brain is aware she could be pinning her crimes on the poor man right?” He produced a lighter from his pocket and sparked the thick cigar to life. He inhaled the grey scent, a scent that foretold tar-infested lungs.

  “I thought of that, but then I got a visit from another person pinning these murders on Hemmings.”

  “Who?” Spencer relished in the warm burn of a smoke. It had been too long since he’d lavished in this feeling.

  “An Adam Walker.” Spencer had heard that name before. Racking his brain, it didn’t take too long to produce the morning he’d ransacked Miss. Miller’s Cotswold home. He knew the name Adam Walker; her neighbour, Officer Walker. How could he forget, he’d left that man’s home with an anger that seethed. “And I did some digging into him from that morning at his home; he is a former off
icer, not an officer.”

  “Impersonating an officer is a punishable offence,”

  “We’ve got no actual proof he impersonated an officer. But I do have men looking into him.”

  “You could pour men into looking into him, but you could do nothing in regards to the name that’s been popping up too much with this case, huh?” With each drag from that thick cigar, there was a rotten look in Spencer’s eyes. “What’d your men find on him so far?”

  “I also have men looking into Alexander Hemmings, well, they did a background search. We need a higher approval for the resources we’re going to invest into carrying out an investigation into him.” Wallace explained. “Walker was stripped of his badge, something about overlooking due process.”

  “Higher resources like Chief of police?”

  “Exactly.” Wallace beamed. He leaned back in his seat, his eyes fixed on the red velvet curtains almost as if he’d wanted his own opportunity with the girls that Black had sent on their way. Wallace wasn’t a man that often found himself in a strip-club, but he was after all a man, a single one at that.

  “What did yer background check dig up?”

  “Huh?”

  “You little horny bastard! What did your background check on Hemmings dig up?”

  “Oh, er... he works as a janitor at Concord Mills, lives downtown with a roommate Peter Miles, and was last seen at the USPS where many pedestrians have claimed he’d kidnapped a middle-aged man.”

  “Why didn’t anyone report it?” Spencer frowned, pulling the cigar from his lips and letting it burn between his pointer and middle finger.

  “The kidnapping or the missing person?”

  “Both.”

  “There’s record of the missing persons report, but nothing on the kidnapping.”

  “And this is where yer’ incompetent people need more resources, huh?” Spencer returned the cigar to his lips and took in a long bitter drag.