Last Seen

by Rick Mofina

  “Because this is what we know,” he said. “A woman who works at the hair salon had stepped out to buy a soda at the corner store and said you were sitting alone in your car in the passenger seat. Sound familiar? This was about a month ago.”

  Faith looked away.

  “The woman said you were crying. She was concerned and said she went to you and asked if you were okay. You waved her off, saying you were fine. She said she remembered this because she’d recognized you from the TV coverage of Gage’s disappearance.”

  Lang looked at Faith.

  “Is any of this ringing a bell, Faith?”

  She stared at her hands on the table before her.

  “Is there something important you and Cal are not telling us?”

  * * *

  “I’ll ask you again, Cal.” Price reached for the folder. “Have you ever had any dealings with anyone at the plaza or any of the businesses?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Price slid a photo of a man in his early seventies who looked like the kind of guy who’d chat weather and sports with you on your front porch.

  “Recognize this man?”

  Cal shook his head.

  “He runs the hardware store, and he said that four weeks ago, thirty days to be exact, you were in his shop.”

  “I really don’t remember.”

  “Well, he said you spent most of your time talking on your phone, that you were quite serious so your call must’ve been important. However, I’m curious about what you bought.”

  “I’m sorry, I guess I was preoccupied. I don’t remember.”

  “Well, after seeing you on TV and with all that’s happened, Hap Varnow, the man who runs the hardware store, certainly remembered, even had a credit card receipt with the date.”

  Price consulted her notes.

  “Mr. Varnow confirms you bought a heavy steel lock and some six feet of steel chain.” Price looked hard at Cal. “Now what would you need that for? And why was your wife sitting in the car crying while you were making your purchase? And why would we find your missing son’s shoe in the Dumpster in the back of that very plaza?”

  Cal said nothing.

  “Now, Cal, you can see how this looks. How it leads us to think that maybe you’re not telling us everything we need to know.”

  18

  Detective Lang leaned forward, turning his head so that his face was in Faith’s sight line.

  “Why were you crying that day? Why did you stop at that strip mall, the same mall where today we found Gage’s shoe? Who was with you that day? Who was driving? Was it Cal?”

  Faith began squeezing the tissue in her hands. Blinking through her tears, she lifted her head to the ceiling, as if the answer were there.

  “I don’t remember.”

  Lang leaned back. “You don’t remember.”

  * * *

  As his memory of the past dawned on him, Cal lifted his eyes to Price.

  “Gage had a ball game that day,” Cal said.

  “A ball game? Okay.” She took notes.

  “He got a ride to the game with the Thompsons because Faith and I had to work and were late, so we caught up at the game at River Ridge South Park.”

  “Where did you and Faith meet to go to the game?”

  “At home, that’s when one of the coaches, or dads, called and asked me to bring a lock and chain to the park. I didn’t have one, so when we were driving to the park I saw the hardware store in that plaza and pulled in.”

  “Do you remember exactly who called you?”

  “I’m not sure. Somebody called from the game.”

  “Why did they ask you to get a lock and chain?”

  “Someone had tried to break into the team’s equipment storage bin at the park and they wanted to secure it.”

  Price nodded and took notes.

  “All right. But why was Faith crying in the car?”

  * * *

  “Faith.” Lang softened his voice. “If something had upset you enough to draw a stranger’s attention, I think you would remember.”

  “Cal and I likely had a stupid argument that day. I don’t remember where we were exactly on a specific day a month ago.”

  “But you were with Cal?”

  “Yes, probably.”

  “Do you remember stopping at the plaza?”

  “Maybe we stopped at that plaza. I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “We might’ve been going to Gage’s baseball game.”

  “Was Gage with you at the time?”

  “No. Is this a trick, Detective? Because you told me that, according to the stranger, I was alone in the car.”

  “No trick, just a question. Do you remember what you and Cal were discussing that resulted in you being upset?”

  Faith looked at him, feeling her fear and fury churning. “I don’t see what this has to do with the fact our son is missing and his shoe found in the garbage! My God.”

  * * *

  Price worked over the gum in her mouth. “Can you tell me why Faith was crying in the car?”

  “We argued.”

  “About?”

  “The looming layoffs at my newspaper and how we were going to make ends meet if I lost my job.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No. That was, and is, an ongoing matter for us.”

  “A source of tension?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Is it straining your marriage?”

  Cal didn’t answer. He’d already said their marriage was solid.

  “Cal, is it straining your marriage?”

  “No, the situation was making us anxious, causing us worry, but our marriage is okay.”

  Price nodded, made a few notes, glanced at the time. “I think that’s it for now.”

  * * *

  “Faith,” Lang said. “I understand how upsetting this is for you. Believe me, we’re doing everything we can to find Gage. Finding his shoe is a break for us but we’ve got a lot of work to do, a lot of ground to cover, and your cooperation is critical.”

  Faith nodded while opening and closing the crumpled tissue in her hands, her fingers still bearing the ink from fingerprinting.

  Lang checked the time.

  “Okay,” he said. “I think we’re done for now.”

  * * *

  After the Hudsons had left with Officer Ramirez to return home, Price and Lang got to work comparing notes and assessing the couple’s latest statements.

  They’d been working for about five minutes when their supervisor, Lieutenant Tony Sosa, summoned them to his office.

  “You might want to sit for this.” Sosa’s tie was loosened and his sleeves rolled to the elbows. Standing and studying a clipboard, he said, “We’re still searching all the businesses at Emerson, as well as the boarded-up storefront.”

  “Anything?”

  “Nothing so far. We’re also canvassing the neighborhood.”

  “What about the midway people?”

  “Still going through interviews, still got a lot of work.” Sosa dropped the clipboard. “This is a helluva case. We got broken security cameras and we got several potential crime scenes. We got every person the department can spare on this case but our resources are limited, even with Cook County helping us. We’re a small department and we don’t have the budget for this.”

  “What’re you trying to tell us, Tony?” Lang asked.

  “As of this moment, the FBI is taking the lead.”

  “The FBI?” Price said. “Just when we’re digging into the parents, new investigators are going to come in so the feds can bigfoot the case?”

  “Rachel, they have the resources, they have the expertise. It’s out of our hands.”

  “This is B
S,” Lang said.

  “You know we’ve been looping them in since the onset, sharing everything—notes, reports, statements. The FBI’s case agent will be Tibor Malko.”

  “Tibor Malko,” Lang said. “I heard that name somewhere.”

  “I worked with him once when I was in Houston,” Sosa said. “He’s a legendary asshole and a legendary expert in child abductions and kidnappings. It’s all he’s done for the last ten years.”

  Disappointed, Lang and Price shook their heads.

  “Your orders are to get any new material to the FBI, ASAP,” Sosa said. “There’s a case-status meeting first thing in the morning. We’re setting up a formal command post, with a joint-agency team here in the second-floor meeting room. So, get to it.”

  “Wait,” Price said. “What else can you tell us about this Malko?”

  “He’s got one of the sharpest minds in the FBI and he’s brutal with suspects—and other investigators.”

  19

  Bursts of sparks swirled into the night from the fire that blazed in a steel drum among the RVs and campers where the carnies were lodged.

  It was after midnight and the hiss and crackle of the wood had replaced the earsplitting music, diesel roars and screams of the midway. The smells of hydraulic fluid, deep fryers and cotton candy gave way to wood smoke and marijuana in the tranquility that was punctuated with beer cans being opened and the quiet conversations of another fair day’s end.

  Some of the women and men who operated the rides and games of chance had gathered, as they always did, in lawn chairs around the fire.

  “It’s a shame about that little boy gone missing from the Chambers. Do they have any ideas on what happened?” Gail, a seventy-year-old pro who ran the water-gun-balloon races, asked before taking a pull from her Marlboro, then a swig from her Bud.

  “Got to be some pervert grabbed him in the dark is how I see it,” said Lloyd, who’d been running the Machine Gun Star game for twenty-five—or was it twenty-six?—years now.

  “There’s some who think maybe the parents had somethin’ to do with it,” said Chuck, who oversaw the Polar Rocket. “It was on the news that police were talkin’ to ’em.”

  “That’s all standard stuff,” said Ted Burch, who was in charge of the Ferris wheel and had been with Ultra-Fun since 1976, longer than anyone. “What I can’t figure out is how you lose a kid in the Chambers? It’s just a series of connected boxes flowing traffic to the end, where everyone has to go through the spinner and down the chutes. Ain’t that right, Alma and Sid?”

  “That’s right,” said Sid Griner, who helped people at the Chambers’ chutes. He had his ball cap pulled low and was slouched in his chair, staring into the flames and quietly sipping his Coors.

  “What’s more,” Ted continued, “you got them cameras in there everywhere and trip alarms on the exit doors, right, Alma?”

  Alma McCain was beside Sid, her husband on the road. She also had a man back home in Arkansas, but that was another matter. She ran the board on the Chambers and had been troubled by Gage Hudson’s disappearance. She’d wrapped a blanket around herself as if she were freezing, gazed into the fire and dragged on her joint.

  “I said—” Ted raised his voice “—ain’t that right, Alma?”

  “Yes, Ted.” She exhaled smoke. “But everyone knows we had trouble with the cameras and the electric network after that lightning strike in Milwaukee. Police have sealed the ride and they’re working with our mechanics and state inspectors, practically taking it apart. They’ve shut it down. Now Vaughn says we gotta find work on the midway. It sucks.”

  “Sid can help me on the Rocket,” Chuck said.

  “And I hear Mavis wants someone to take shifts on the basket toss,” Gail said. “They’re going to put all the Chambers actors in costumes over in Big Small Kiddieland while we’re here.”

  “I tell ya—” Lloyd snorted “—I hear that the cops are going to intensify their searches. What’re you hearing, Chuck?”

  “I’m hearing the same thing and they’re going to keep questioning everybody with the FBI taking over. I was already taken downtown and ‘interviewed,’ is what they call it. What about the rest of you? Alma, Sid?”

  “Not yet. I mean, we talked to River Ridge police a few times already,” Sid said. “We’re supposed to go downtown before we pull out for Indianapolis.”

  “Be on your toes,” Chuck said. “The FBI takes this to a whole new level. They go deep into your history, so if you got any trouble, they’ll know.”

  Alma blinked at the flames, then shot Sid a subtle sideways glance as Chuck continued.

  “And word is that they’re going to make some people take lie-detector tests.”

  “That’s serious shit,” Gail said.

  “You can say that again,” said Johnny Lee Snow, the actor who was the chain-saw-wielding lunatic in the Chambers. “They drilled me already. I was down there twice with Abel, our ticket taker.”

  “Is that all that fat ass does now, take tickets for the Chambers?” Lloyd shook his head.

  “Forget that—how’d it go with the cops, Johnny?” Chuck asked.

  “Unpleasant. They grilled me on what I saw, what I did. Asked me if I liked little boys, if I took the kid or knew or helped someone take him. They grilled me on my background, my possession charges, for which, for the record, I was never convicted.”

  “Speaking of Abel Wixom,” Lloyd said, “where is that fat bastard, Johnny? He owes me a hundred bucks.”

  “Right after the interview downtown he said he had family trouble. He took off to California, said he’d talked to Vaughn about catching up with us on the road.”

  “Family trouble?” Lloyd scratched his chin. “I didn’t know Abel even had a family. Are you sure the cops didn’t find something out about him? I bet that old weirdo has a checkered past.”

  “I don’t know,” Johnny said. “He never told me nothin’.”

  “Tell me, Alma.” Ted had gone mentally deep into his theories on what could’ve happened to Gage Hudson and came out of them with more questions. “You’re sure you didn’t see something on your board, on your cameras, when that family was in the Chambers?”

  “Nothing.” Alma’s hand shook as she dragged on her pot. “Our system was malfunctioning, like I already told you, Ted and the damn police. Jesus.”

  “Take it easy. It just gnaws at me how strange it all is,” Ted said. “What about you, Sid? Didn’t the kid come by you on the chutes?”

  “Never saw him, but there’s a steady stream of people coming through there and they all look alike to me. You know how that is, Ted.”

  “Yep, sure do.”

  “You know what I heard?” Lloyd said. “That Vaughn is freaked right out about this. It’s making his blood pressure rise.”

  “We all know that,” Gail said. “How he’s ordering us to cooperate with the cops, let them search, let them question us. Said he’d get us lawyers if we needed them. He’s stressed about insurance, the liability, getting sued.”

  “He’s stressed about losing money,” Chuck added. “The Chambers is a big cash stream and now it’s shut down. We don’t have many more days here before we move on to Indy, but there’re rumors from Ultra-Fun corporate that there could be warrants to freeze the entire show indefinitely while they investigate. If that happens, we’re going to find ourselves out of work.”

  “Shit,” Johnny said.

  “I second that,” Chuck said.

  “Well, that’s a helluva thing.” Ted burped, crushed his beer can and tossed it into the fire. “And there ain’t a helluva lot I can do about it tonight. It’s one damned big mystery to me. I’m turning in.”

  “Me, too,” Chuck said.

  One by one, members of the group folded their chairs and retreated into their respective campers and RVs.

  Only two peop
le stayed behind.

  20

  Sid and Alma stayed back to watch the fire wane until Sid downed the last of his beer. Then they collected their chairs and Alma’s blanket, and made their way amid the cables, hoses and electrical cords to their home on the road, a white 2011 Ford Excel TS camper van parked behind the big thrill rides.

  Sid had bought the van from a dealer in Arizona. It was in good shape, had low mileage and was comfortable for two people. It came with a generator, a shower, a toilet and a sofa that could be configured into a king-size bed, or two twin beds. The galley had a microwave, sink and a small oven; there was a flat-screen TV and DVD player, big leather seats, an awning and a big storage unit on the back.

  Once they were inside, Alma collapsed into her seat and cupped her hands to her face.

  “Oh cripes, Sid, oh cripes. I’m so scared, so damned scared!”

  He knelt before her and gently took her hands into his.

  “We did nothing they can put on us, okay?”

  “But they’re looking at everything and that Ted Burch with his damn questions. Who does he think he is, Sherlock Holmes?”

  “Don’t worry about him.”

  “What if he tells the cops all his theories?”

  “You’ve got to relax, babe. There is no way anyone can tie anything to us, okay? Trust me.”

  Sid held her hands firmly as she searched his eyes until she found some degree of assurance. Then he kissed her cheek and smiled.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  He reached into his pocket, pulled out his Swiss Army knife, unfolded the largest blade and went to the back of the van. Alma didn’t know what he was going to do and she didn’t watch. Instead, she gazed out the window at the night, trying not to think as she listened to Sid’s movements.

  A full minute passed before he returned with a small brick-shaped object wrapped in blue plastic. He slowly opened it, revealing a bundle of tens, twenties and fifties, bound with rubber bands.

  “This is a reminder of what it’s all for.” He grinned, the bills snapping as he fanned them. “This is our dream come true, babe. With this we can go to California, buy into my uncle’s operation of kiddie rides at the malls and make more money than we ever can here.”