“You look tired.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled, grabbing a bagel.
“Is everything all right, CeeCee?”
“Just fucking fantastic.”
“Okay. Never mind, I won’t ask. Where should we start today?”
“I think we should go through the entire case file again to see if there’s anything we missed before we re-interview anyone.”
Two more weeks went by without a break in the case. Two weeks of Michael and me spending every day together. There was no denying it. Our emotions were out in full force and growing stronger than ever, while Eric and I barely spoke. Every time I tried to bring up the subject of Jordan, he put his hand up to signal he didn’t want to discuss it, infuriating me further. One afternoon while Michael and I were contemplating where to eat lunch, a break in the case happened.
We were gathering up the case file when Coop came charging into my office looking like something was wrong. A very familiar scenario by now.“What?” I snapped, anticipating the worst.
“Someone just tried to kidnap Austin Brewer.”
CHAPTER NINE
“Where is he now? Is he hurt?” I asked, frantically grabbing my car keys.“No, he’s fine. He’s at home. I’ll follow you both over there.”
Michael was barely in my car with the door closed before I peeled out of the parking lot. On our way I called Kincaid, specifically to chew her out about why no patrol car was keeping an eye on the Brewer house like I had requested.
“I had a patrol car there, CeeCee. The guys have to be able to break and eat lunch, for Christ’s sake! I don’t appreciate you questioning me about it either.” Oh, she was snippy.
“If they left for lunch, then you should’ve assigned someone to replace them until they were finished.” I was even snippier.
“I’m not going to debate this matter on the phone, especially since I don’t answer to you. I’m the captain, remember?”
“I’m reminded every day,” I said with my low, dry sarcasm.
“Melissa Brewer waited an hour before she called us,” she said, ignoring my last remark. “She thought she was overreacting and being paranoid.”
I relayed this information to Michael.
“She did what? What the hell is wrong with that woman?” Michael was taken aback.
Turning onto the Brewers’ street, we saw Kincaid’s SUV parked in their driveway. I was hoping to beat her there because, knowing Naomi, she probably started questioning Austin Brewer already, scaring him to death in the process. Coop pulled in behind us and as we started toward the front door, I heard a man yelling. Dr. Parker was standing in his front yard, waving for one of us to come and talk to him.
“I’ll take care of him. You guys go ahead,” Coop said, walking toward the doctor. Melissa Brewer was already waiting at the front door. When I walked into the living room, Kincaid was sitting on the couch with Austin. I hated being right. She was talking to him like he was a nine-month-old baby; directly in his face and loudly, like a toddler herself. Austin looked trapped and horrified until he saw me. He leaped off the couch and ran straight to me with his arms wide open. Being the wide receiver, I caught him immediately.
“Hey! Poweece lady! I almost catched the bad guy today!” Austin grabbed tightly around my leg, his chubby face gazing up at me eager to please.
“I heard, Austin! You did a very good job. You’re going to get a special badge for the job you did today. You’ll have to tell me all about it and how smart you were!”
“I will! I will!” he yelled. Then his voice dropped to a whisper and he pulled my shirt so I would bend down to him. “I don’t like that other lady. She thinks I’m a baby and not a big boy with a badge!”
Austin’s whisper was a small yell, loud enough for the entire room to hear, Kincaid included. Kincaid, red faced and going through her hourly ritual of being a world-class dumbass, walked toward the door.
“CeeCee, just fill me in on what he says. I’ll be driving around the area looking for anything suspicious. Just call my cell.”
“Okay, Cap.”
I looked back down at Austin, who was now eyeing Michael with an air of suspicion. Throw a cap on his head and a pipe in his mouth, and Austin could be a regular junior Sherlock Holmes. Michael had remained quiet, though not resisting a smirk at Kincaid’s ignorance and lack of finesse.
Melissa Brewer nervously asked if we would like anything to drink. She seemed as uneasy now as when I’d first interviewed her about Hanna Parker. I told Michael and Austin to get to know each other better while I talked to Melissa in the kitchen—where I let her have it with both barrels.
“You better have one hell of an explanation for why you waited one hour to call the police after someone just tried to kidnap your son.”
She looked terrified and immediately started bawling, holding on to the countertop for support. I felt for her, but not all that much. Her passive responses to the last several incidents still had me steaming. The thought that we might have actually been able to catch the man who killed Hanna Parker infuriated me even more. I didn’t want to hear sobs and cries; I wanted an explanation.
“You might as well get it out now, Melissa. Quite frankly, you could be facing felony charges, as well as an investigation by children’s services.”
“I-I know! I’m sorry!”
Austin led Michael into the kitchen. Upon seeing his mother a basket case, the child began crying and ran over to her. The hysteria was spreading and getting louder. Trying not to add to the confusion, Michael gave me a questioning look and I promptly waved my hand, sign language for don’t worry about it. It would be useless to talk to Austin now that he was a blubbering mess. I signaled to Melissa that I needed to talk to Austin and would be out in the living room waiting. Michael brought up the rear.
“What was that all about?” he asked quietly once we were out of earshot from the kitchen.
“Not much, I just unloaded on her, essentially saying she’s been a piss-poor mother and lucky if she doesn’t go to jail.”
“Knowing you, I’m sure that’s exactly what was said. No sugar coating from you, right?” He put his hand on the small of my back and chuckled.
“Right.” I turned out of his reach, feeling the familiar explosion of desire and need I experienced whenever he touched me.
Melissa and Austin walked in, both appearing to have settled down and now ready to talk. Melissa sat on the couch and motioned for Austin to sit next to her, which he ignored, climbing onto her lap instead. Melissa began telling us her version of what happened earlier.
Austin’s preschool party was the following day, and Melissa had been in the kitchen making cookies while he was in the living room playing with his trucks. Austin was being his normal four-year-old self: loud, whistling, making siren noises and yelling “fire!” As with any parent who has a child that age or younger, silence brings about an immediate concern if the child is not directly in sight. Such was the case today.
“I didn’t hear Austin making his fire sounds anymore. In fact there was no sound at all coming from the room.”
Thinking he may have gotten into something he wasn’t supposed to, Melissa left the kitchen, stopping dead in her tracks when she saw the front door of her house wide open. In a panic, she ran outside, fearing Austin had managed to open it and walk out, something he was able to do on two prior occasions. It was then she saw an older white station wagon backing out of her driveway and heading up the street at a high speed. The man driving was white and had blond hair.
“There was a temporary registration tag in the back, but I didn’t get a close look at it.”
Standing in the front yard, she began yelling Austin’s name. He called out to her from inside the house, where she found him in the living room, playing with his trucks and once again making ordinary childish noises
“I asked him if he opened the front door, and he said it was the tall man that did it. I thought he might have been making things up and the wind blew it op
en, or he really did open it, then used his quite vivid imagination to come up with the story about the tall man. I guess I brushed off the car as someone just turning around in my driveway.” She eyeballed me, waiting for a response. “I wasn’t thinking, I guess. I mean, Austin does have an active imagination. There was one time our toilet got backed up with almost six cans of Play-Doh in it. When I asked Austin, he told me an old lady with a cane and a beard pushed him down, stole the Play-Doh, and tried to flush it down the toilet…”
Michael grunted, trying to suppress his laugh.
“There also isn’t the slightest bit of wind today, Melissa,” I interrupted.
“I know, but I thought maybe my husband or I hadn’t latched it properly, so anything could have blown it open. Anyway, I went back to making the cookies, but the whole incident kept nagging me. I went back and talked to Austin a little more about it, and that’s when he told me a man came in and asked him if he wanted to go play with Hanna. That’s when I ran to call the police.”
It was very, very quiet in the room. Michael was studying Melissa, analyzing her every word, something he is very good at. And he was clearly making her uncomfortable. Austin looked like he was on the verge of a deep sleep before I called out to him.
“Austin? Do you want to help me catch a bad guy again? You did such a good job the first time.”
“Okay! I played with my fire twucks. The bad guy was standing wight there.” He pointed toward the door.
“What color shirt did he have on, Austin?”
“White. He knew my name too! He asked me if I wanted to play with Hanna!”
“What did you say?”
“I wanted to play wif Hanna, but he runned away.”
With my attention still on Austin, I explained to the child that he should never go with someone he doesn’t know. In the middle of my little safety speech, my phone rang. Kincaid.
“CeeCee! Get out of there and start toward Bellville. A seven-year-old was just taken walking home from school. Keep an ear to your radio, we’re getting a description now,” she yelled before hanging up.
“This was a setup!” I announced to Michael and Coop (who had recently returned), rushing toward the door. “Another child was kidnapped. Melissa, do not take your eyes off Austin for a second, and lock all your doors and windows.”
Speeding away from the Brewers’, I filled Coop and Michael in on Naomi’s call. Bellville was a small village about fifteen minutes south of the city. It was very obvious the suspect used Austin Brewer to distract us while he took another child. He was toying with us, luring us just close enough to think we got him and then disappearing yet again. This guy was brilliant. And fearless. Driving to the village, doing at least seventy-five mph, I radioed in the suspect description for the Austin Brewer case and told every listening officer to look for a white station wagon. As I was talking, I realized it wasn’t much to go on, but it was a start. This guy changed cars, and evidently, his hair color. Right now he could be driving a yellow school bus and wearing a dreadlock wig for all I knew.
All we could gather on the radio was bits and pieces of what happened. Ashley Sanders had been walking home from school. A neighbor in the rear of her house heard the scream, went to her front window two minutes later or so, and noticed items from the child’s backpack spilled out on the sidewalk. Again, no one saw anything more specific. Several uniforms on the scene were giving out the child’s description, so I radioed for one of them to call my cell ASAP. We were almost at the scene when an officer called and told me what was found on the sidewalk. The child’s backpack was fully open with the contents all spilled out. Papers, lunchbox, pencils, and candy were strewn in a very small area, maybe two by three feet. When the officer answered my question if anything else was there, I hung up, slowed the car, and looked at Michael.
“Shall I take a guess?” he asked.
“Of course you know the answer. They found a My Size shoe sitting on top of the child’s backpack.”
“Son of a bitch” were Michael’s only words as we turned onto the street where Ashley Sanders was last heard from.
It was getting to be an all-too-familiar scene, and I hated to admit it, but the suspect had already started wearing us all down. No law-enforcement agency is ever prepared for multiple kidnappings no matter how well funded, trained, staffed, or anything else we are.
The crime lab processed what was on the sidewalk, and an Amber Alert was issued. I spoke with the woman who called, another imbecile who waited until her soap opera went to a commercial break before checking on what she thought was a child screaming. A few seconds after that, Ashley’s mother had driven around the corner and seen the backpack and its contents on the sidewalk. She had finished her errands early and decided to pick Ashley up, knowing the route she took home. It was only when Ashley’s mother was screaming hysterically that the woman called the police. Without a doubt, I believe the woman would never have called the police had Ashley’s mother not shown up.
Ashley Sanders was beautiful. He’d known that when he’d taken her just a short time ago. After all, he had been watching her. He’d known the route she walked on her way home from school, he knew where she lived, and even in the darkest, deepest parts of his mind, had known she wouldn’t fight much. He had been a little surprised when she’d screamed, but that only made it more interesting and exciting.
He relishes the dreams about each one; the watching, the waiting, and each second up until the moment. When it happens, when it’s time, the frustration at the lack of excitement of the real kidnapping grows. It’s never as exciting as when he dreams about it. Still, he can’t complain too much. The sensations he experiences when he really took them were second to no other.Today, when he watched her walking down the street, he felt the familiar quickening of his pulse, as he licked his parched lips. It was an emotion without a definition, an emotion no one could understand. They were already together in their minds; he knew that. He knew she dreamed of him each night when she went to bed. Several days ago when she dropped her book bag and he handed it to her, he saw it in her eyes. Just as he had seen it in Hanna Parker’s, and just as he’d seen it in all the others.
Watching now as Ashley’s mother fell to pieces on the street, he felt the sweet, high-pitched excitement in his body and the ache in his groin. Oh, how wonderful! The cop standing by Ashley’s mother was CeeCee Gallagher, who had played right into his hands—just as he’d planned.
Hearing the stifled cries from the backseat, he knew Ashley was getting impatient and wanted to get home. Home to him. Smiling at the scene unfolding, he quietly drove away.
CHAPTER TEN
Michael and I drove and walked around the area for the next four hours, finding nothing. However, while we were walking the edge of a large area of woods with other uniformed officers, something interesting happened.I hadn’t been paying much attention to the time, so when I saw Eric and Jordan heading our way, I figured they had been called in early. Surprisingly, it was nearing seven o’clock in the evening and they had been at work for five hours already. I had been so focused on the case that I had totally forgotten about my problems with Eric. I looked around for a quick exit, hoping Michael hadn’t seen them and vice versa, but it was too late. Eric came straight toward me, and I braced myself for the inevitable confrontation between Eric and Michael. It would be wishful thinking to hope the two of them might act like adults. It was hard to believe it took this long for them to run into each other. Eric was now only about twenty feet away when Michael saw him. Muttering obscenities, he sighed.
“Here we go.”
Eric and Jordan, curiously, stopped about five feet away.
“Please, everyone, maintain,” I whispered back.
No one said anything. It was one of the most awful, awkward, and uncomfortable moments I can ever remember. It was so bad and so obvious, it became comical. The silence lasted about thirty seconds, but felt like twenty minutes. Eric broke first.
“Michael. How are y
ou?” He nodded grimly toward Michael while speaking politely, though certainly without warmth or friendliness. That seemed as good as it was going to get, which I guess was OK.
Eric’s face maintained the same uninviting look it had when he first saw us, and Michael merely nodded back, almost inaudibly muttering a sound that resembled “hello.” After that, the two just stared at each other. Jordan kept looking at both men, waiting for one or the other to crack. She wore a contemptuous look that made me want to reach over and slap her into next week. It took all I had to keep my face expressionless and my mouth shut. I didn’t even acknowledge she was there until I felt in control enough to speak.
“Have you been out long?” I asked Eric. “We’re going on four hours now and coming up with nothing.”
Jordan was the one to reply. “We’ve been at it for a good two hours now? Right, Eric?” Then, with an arrogant confidence I’ve rarely seen in another human being, she grabbed Eric’s arm and started playfully patting it.
I felt like I would explode right there, but Eric slowly pulled his arm away from her. That did it. I had enough.
“I wasn’t asking you, I was asking my husband the question, honey. If I were to…”
“All right,” Eric interrupted sharply. “We’re gonna keep walking. Let me know if anything turns up. By the way, CeeCee, my parents are keeping the girls overnight since I assume we’ll both be late.” He started walking quickly away from us, Jordan in tow.
I didn’t move. I simply stared at an old rotted tree trunk and continued fuming. Not only was I berserk over Jordan’s behavior, I didn’t like how Eric seemed to come to her defense once I began to attack. He cut me off, walked away, and prevented me from causing her any kind of emotional pain or anxiety whatsoever. It also angered me that Jordan seemed to be aware of the tension between Eric and Michael. How much had he confided in her about the seriousness of our situation?
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