“You guys are probably right. Ok, we tell everybody we hang out with. Let them know what’s going on. Let’s call a kick the can game tonight and spread the word.”
Ellie smiled and leaned against him. He hoped they weren’t making a huge mistake.
Jaxon and Sally arrived at June Littleton’s house in Reston late that afternoon. She was expecting them. Sally had called and asked if they could come by and talk to her about her son’s case. Sally said she seemed somewhat distant, but agreed to see them.
Knocking on the door, Jaxon said, “You got this, right?”
Sally nodded.
The door opened and a woman in her late fifties scowled at them from behind a screened door. She wore a cheap flower print dress with a mismatched belt cinched around her waist, tight, so that her belly hung over it. Her feet were bare and she held a dishrag in her right hand.
“You the police officers?” she said.
“Yes ma’am,” Sally said. “I’m Detective Winston and this is Detective Jennings. May we come in?”
“I’d rather you didn’t. My Mister is napping and I don’t want you wakin’ him. What do you want?”
“Is your ‘Mister,’ Stewart’s Father?”
She seemed to flinch a little at the mention of her son’s name. She wrung her hands in the dishrag and said, “No. That man is long gone. Hell, he wasn’t around much anyway when he was here. Why?”
Sally nodded. “Things like this are never easy, ma’am and I know you’ve been waiting a long time for something to surface in regards to your son. I think we’ve found him, but we need you to come with us and identify him. Could you do that?”
Her face did not change, but her hands stopped the constant wringing of the rag and she sagged against the doorframe. “Is he…?”
Sally nodded. “I’m sorry Mrs. Littleton. I know you must be upset, but it is very important you identify him for us. To be sure. Can you do that?”
She nodded her head slowly, eyes transfixed on some distant object. Then, she seemed to remember they were there. “I’ll get my things,” she whispered, and disappeared back inside. She returned a moment later with her purse and a pair of flat white shoes that clashed with the off-white patterned dress. She shuffled along next to them as they escorted her to the car.
At the morgue, Boris alerted Dr. Barstow and he got Stewart ready for them as they helped her back to Bay C. Before they entered she said, “Will I be able to tell it’s him?”
“I believe so, Mrs. Littleton,” Sally said.
“June. Call me June.”
Sally smiled. “Yes, June. I think you’ll be able to tell us if he’s your son or not.”
She nodded and seemed to shrink a little as they pushed through the door. Dr. Barstow waited for them next to the sliding tray and introduced himself to her before pulling back the plastic sheet.
She gasped.
She reached out to touch his face and then recoiled ever so slightly at the feel of him. Then, she began softly crying. Jaxon felt that was as good a confirmation as anyone could give.
“He’s still so young,” she said. “Have you had him here this whole time?”
“No ma’am,” Sally said. “He was found in a neighborhood swimming pool five months ago. We weren’t able to identify him until today.”
“But how can he look the same? Shouldn’t he have…uh…”
“We think his murderer kept him frozen all this time,” Jaxon said, and she flinched at his voice. It was the first time he had spoken since they met.
“Frozen?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“I don’t know, June,” Sally said. “Whoever did this to your son is a very demented individual.”
“You don’t know who did this?”
“Not yet,” Sally said, “but we’ve made some progress and we will catch him.”
June turned back to her son. “Twenty seven years. He would be thirty nine now.” A single tear tracked down her face and then she began to sob. Sally went to her and put an arm around her. Jaxon knew exactly how she felt.
Chapter 22
That evening, everyone was there, even Patrick. Luke wasn’t sure if Patrick was still sore at them and he guessed it didn’t matter. This was more important than any petty differences they may have had.
All the kids knew about most of the stuff, but the Facebook friend William Smith, and the text messages and phone calls Luke and Ellie had gotten were all new to them. ‘George,’ the pool dummy, drew a few laughs but most were shocked at how the dummy had been traded for a real dead boy.
“That must have been a shocker for you guys,” Ralph said.
“I about crapped my pants,” John said.
Luke’s older sister, Deana, looked mad. “I think you guys are stupid,” she said. “The police need to know about this and you idiots are keeping it from them.”
“Didn’t you hear a single word I said?” Luke asked. “He threatened Ellie and me, and said that if we told anyone, he would kill us. Don’t you think we would have done something by now if we didn’t have that hanging over our heads?”
“The police can protect you,” Deana said.
“Like they protected Paul?” Alan shot back.
“Paul was out all by himself. No one could have helped him,” Deana said.
“That’s right,” Luke said. “Paul was out all by himself and that’s what we need to make sure doesn’t happen to the rest of us. We stick together. Nobody goes anywhere alone. Nobody talks about what we know unless it’s with each other. Nobody keeps any secrets from the rest of the group. Something happens, you tell us.”
“I still don’t like it,” Deana said.
“Deana, we’re trusting you,” Ellie said. “Luke didn’t want to tell you all because he thought the group couldn’t keep it to themselves. Please don’t prove him right. We need help, and we wanted to make sure everybody else was safe. I convinced him to break the silence, but if you involve any adults at this point, you could be hurting your brother. And me.”
Deana was quiet for a minute, then finally said, “Alright, I’ll keep quiet for now. But if I feel like you guys are being dumber than normal, I’ll involve the police.”
“Come to us first,” Luke said. “If we go to the police, it will be a group decision. Ok?”
Everybody agreed, even Deana.
“Now that’s out of the way,” Jimmy said, “let’s play.”
Luke thought it had been the best game they had played in a long time.
Chapter 23
Luke, Ellie, Jimmy, and John were always the first at the pool in the morning. It was their job to open up. Jimmy pulled the keys from his gym bag and unlocked the gate. They split up with Luke and John opening the locker rooms, while Jimmy checked the pump house and Ellie started working on the lane dividers.
Luke was singing in the locker room, the echo creating a cool sound, when he heard Ellie scream.
“Ellie!” he shouted, and ran out of the locker room onto the deck. She was standing at the edge of the pool, one hand holding a lane divider and the other clasped over her mouth. In the pool was a boy. He was resting on the bottom at the six foot mark and the water was tinged pink around him. As Luke walked closer, he could see the body was missing its head. It was floating a few feet out, face up. The eyes were half open and the mouth was set in a gasp with water sloshing in and out of it.
“Ah crap” Jimmy said, kneeling at the edge of the pool.
Luke stood next to Ellie who turned and buried her face in his shoulder, crying.
“I think it’s Jason Margot,” Luke said.
“Damn,” John whispered, coming up behind them.
Jimmy turned and threw up all over the deck.
Jaxon turned to the swim coach, Will Francis, and asked, “So the kids open up every morning?”
“Yes. They get everything ready for practice,” Will said.
“Does anyone else have a key?”
“What time do the kids usually show up?”
“Probably around 7:15. Practice starts at 7:30.”
“Right. Thank you Mr. Francis. Please help keep all the kids out of the area for a while. The pool will be closed for a couple of days while we gather evidence.”
Jaxon walked over to where Harrison and his little group were sitting. “You guys keep showing up whenever something happens. If I didn’t have in my possession proof you didn’t do anything, I’d swear you were involved. You’re lucky I have that proof.”
He knelt in front of Ellie. “Are you alright?”
She nodded. He could tell she wasn’t, but couldn’t do anything about it. Sally hadn’t arrived yet, but when she did, he’d have her talk to the girl.
“Think you guys can talk about it?” he asked them all.
He watched them all nod.
“Who wants to go first?”
“I found him, so I guess I will,” Ellie said.
He listened as she went through the trauma of finding the decapitated boy. The story was pretty consistent with what the coach had described and then what the boys told him next. He felt bad for them. They seemed to be getting caught up in a lot of stuff kids their age shouldn’t see. His cell phone rang and he looked at the number expecting it to be Sally. It read ‘unavailable’ and the number showed up as 000-000-0000.
He answered it. “Jaxon.”
“Hello Detective.” The voice was grating and high pitched. It had a metallic quality to it and he could tell it was being electronically altered. It drew out the word ‘Detective,’ mocking him.
“Who is this?” Jaxon asked.
“Did my little gift help?”
“What gift would that be?”
“The picture, of course. You really didn’t think the animals were meant for you, did you?”
“Not really. But we had already identified the boy yesterday morning.”
“So you say. I was becoming worried you would never honor him. Five months is a long time to find someone, isn’t it Detective?”
The voice was hurting his ear. The way he liked to drag out his title caused a kind of feedback through the speaker of the phone and he had to pull it away from his head. He saw Sally walk up and he frantically signaled for her. She walked over briskly.
He put his hand over the phone. “Call downtown,” he whispered to Sally, “Have them set up a trace on my cell. Hurry!”
She took out her phone and moved away.
“Still there Detective?”
“Yes. Who are you?”
“Come now, Jaxon. We don’t have much time. Can’t you think of something more useful to ask me?”
For some reason, Jaxon could think of only one thing. “Why?”
“That’s better. That wasn’t too hard was it?”
Jaxon remained silent.
“Because I can, Detective.”
“Why are you calling me?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“Help me.”
“There you go. You just answered that question yourself.”
“Where are you?”
“Tell Winston I like her yellow blouse.”
Jaxon’s eyes snapped up as his heart leapt into his throat.
He’s here!
The line went dead.
They searched the area and finally found a battery powered web cam mounted to a lamp post at the southern end of the pool complex. It was the kind of video camera hunters used in the woods to track game.
Jaxon found out an hour later the image was uploaded to a server run by the manufacturer of the web cam and the video was accessed through a log-in page for each individual user. No personal information was kept on the users. All you needed was the serial number for the hunting cam to access the website. He would have his I.T. guys see if they could pull any information on where he was accessing the server from.
“Any luck with the cell phone?” Jaxon asked Sally.
“Nothing useful,” she said. “The call was placed using an internet based phone service. Basically you can call from anywhere in the world and pick your number you want displayed on the caller I.D. The internet company is based out of Moscow. Good luck trying to get any information out of the Russian Mob.”
“I think we may need to get the FBI involved. They may be able to get some information we can’t access. I’ll call Holt in Washington today.”
Emory Holt was a FBI agent out of D.C. who handled the District of Columbia and the surrounding counties. Jaxon hated involving the FBI, but he felt he had no choice at this point. Things were getting out of hand and they needed some help.
“Your call, Boss. I know we need help, but they will come in here and take over.”
“I’ll try and approach it from an informational stand point first. See if he’ll stay out of it for now,” Jaxon said.
“Knowing Holt, he’ll want in,” she said.
Jaxon shrugged. What could he do? Kids were dying.
A commotion at the entrance of the pool caught their attention.
“I don’t care sir,” a patrolmen was saying, loudly, “this is a crime scene and I can’t let you pass.”
“I know that. Just get a message to Detectives Jennings and Winston that Burt Lolly needs to see them. I have some more video. They’ll definitely want to see it.”
Jaxon walked up with Sally and said, “Mr. Lolly. What have you got?”
“Everything,” Mr. Lolly said, his face pale and troubled. He had the look of someone with information he really didn’t want to possess. “And you won’t believe it.”
Chapter 24
Luke and Ellie were at her house up in her room. She was quietly crying into his neck, her hot, wet tears slipping down his shoulder as he held her tight. He felt on the verge of some emotional breakdown himself, but was doing his best to hold it together for her.
They had left Jimmy and John at their house, saying they would meet up later and talk to everyone else. So far, nobody was panicking and Luke attributed this to the fact Jason Margot was not in their little group. Selfish, maybe, but they couldn’t protect everyone, could they?
He was beginning to have doubts about their lack of involvement with the police and though their pact between each other only went so far, Jason Margot still did not deserve to die. Could they have prevented his death had they gone to Jaxon and Winston? Probably not, but maybe he wouldn’t feel so bad right now if they had.
Ellie lifted her head up off his shoulder and looked into his eyes. The pain he saw there bore right into his heart and his breath caught in his throat as he felt her hand touch his face. I’m not going to lose it, he said to himself. I’m not going to lose it. He had to look away as he felt his eyes well up. Apparently she wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. She turned his face back toward her.
“Look at me,” she said. A single tear slipped down her cheek, but her voice was strong. “We have to stop this, now. I can’t live with another death hanging over my head. We go to the group today and then we go to the police.”
He couldn’t find his voice. If he opened his mouth to speak, she would hear the weakness in it and he couldn’t let that happen. He needed to be strong. He nodded his head, trying to buy a little more time to get himself under control.
“You’re agreeing with me?” she asked, pulling back a bit and searching his face.
He waited a beat. “We need to have the group vote,” he finally said, his voice sounding stronger than he expected. “We all need to decide.”
“Why? It’s our problem. He hasn’t threatened them, only us.”
“We made an agreement with them. And besides, maybe someone will have some better advice.”
“You’re going to try and convince them to keep silent, aren’t you?” Another tear trickled down her cheek and her lip trembled ever so slightly. “You’re going to fight
me on this?”
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t risk anything going wrong and her, somehow, ending up on the wrong side of all this.
Her face fell again and she looked away. He stared at her, his heart breaking in his chest. He felt like he was betraying her, but so much more was at stake. He loved her with every fiber in his body and he didn’t care who else got hurt, as long as it wasn’t her.
She stood. “You’re being selfish,” she said, angrily wiping away her tears. “You’re thinking only of yourself.”
“How can you say that?” he asked, but feared her answer.
“I know you. You’re thinking only of saving me,” she said, her voice cracking, tears streaming down her face, “not of anybody else who could get hurt. Well, I can’t let you. You’ll destroy us, don’t you see? I can’t live with him taking someone else’s life to save mine and I’ll hate you for letting it happen. Do you understand? I’ll hate you if you let it happen!”
He stood and went to her, grabbing and holding her tight. She resisted and softly beat on his chest, then succumbed and fell against him sobbing. A single tear fell from his face as his world came apart.
Burt Lolly loaded up the video while his wife Marie, brought them all some coffee.
“Honey,” Burt said. “I don’t think you should see this. It’s pretty upsetting.”
She nodded at him and said, “Let me know if you need anything else.” And she left the room.
“I pulled last night’s video and watched as soon as I saw all the commotion this morning. You two may want to sit down.”
“We’re alright, Mr. Lolly. Go ahead and show us what you have.”
“Burt,” he said. “Please call me Burt.” He hit play.
The screen showed the front yard again just as the masked individual entered the area from the left carrying what Jaxon presumed was the boy. He paused in front of the yard, turned and looked, facing the camera. He actually waved.
“Bastard,” Burt whispered.
He was wearing the same clothing and had on the white mask they had seen in the earlier surveillance video, but no other distinguishing marks or clothing could be made out. The boy was over his shoulder, his head hanging down his back, limp and still. Jaxon could not tell if he was alive or dead.
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