Last Seen

by Rick Mofina

  Thorne rolled her eyes slightly, shook her head with the hint of a smile. “Yeah, you’d expect that from an evil, deranged, child-raping murderer.” Her eyes narrowed. “You ever look at the crime scene photos of what he did to Teddie Turco? The internal investigation found nothing. Listen, Ezili was in possession of that boy’s DNA. Our case against him was as solid as the walls of this room.”

  “You know he was stabbed to death by a fellow inmate at Dixon Correctional Center ten months ago?”

  “Yeah, can’t say I shed a tear.”

  “So you don’t believe members of Illicitum Passio could be behind Gage Hudson’s abduction, as some way to honor Ezili?”

  Thorne eyed him carefully. “I think you’re reaching with that one.”

  “Are you aware that members of the group have been known to be pathologically loyal to one another, with a cultlike devotion to vendettas?”

  “That could be, but if so, why go after the Hudsons?”

  “Possibly because of Cal’s reporting and profile with the Chicago Star-News?”

  She thought for a moment, a subtle wave of unease flickering across her face. “Maybe, but why not me, the lead homicide detective? Wouldn’t I be the lead enemy? Why not threaten me, or my teenage daughter?”

  “Have you received any threats in relation to Ezili’s case?”

  “No, nothing. That’s why I think this is a weak theory, based on what you’re sharing with me.”

  Lewin glanced at Hern, then back at Thorne.

  “All right,” Lewin said. “I think we’re done for now.”

  * * *

  Cal had been sitting alone in River Ridge police headquarters at Price’s desk, waiting in agony.

  He knew they had put Faith in another room.

  A TV screen was tuned to an all-news network. Nothing had emerged about Gage. If it had, no one had told him. No word on whether Wixom had survived his suicide attempt to talk to investigators.

  Cal glanced at the time. It was late and no one knew if Malko and Marsh were due to return late tonight or in the morning. Cal had overheard talk of sending him home. The uncertainty was tormenting him.

  Activity and discussion spilled from the hall where the interview rooms were and into the squad room. Lewin and Hern, the FBI agents who’d been taking apart Cal’s old stories, were thanking a woman, who turned toward Cal.

  In a heartbeat, their eyes met. Cal recognized her instantly. It was the first time he’d seen her in years but he knew her voice—knew it all too well from their phone conversations in the past few days.

  Lewin shook her hand. “Thanks again for your help, Detective Thorne.”

  Cal’s stomach roiled. Using her real name now, is she? Not Beth Gibson?

  Why was she here? What did she tell them?

  Did she tell them everything?

  72

  Billings, Montana

  Time was ticking down on Gage Hudson.

  Upon landing from Denver, FBI agents Tracy Chiu and Al Decker went directly to the FBI’s office in downtown Billings.

  It was well into the evening and Billings agent Scott Nesbitt, who’d kept the office open, helped them heft their equipment in hard aluminum cases to the second floor of the five-story white stone building. “This way.” Nesbitt led them to a meeting room where he’d placed Abel Wixom’s recovered laptop on the conference table.

  Aware that the key to Gage Hudson’s location could be hidden in the device, Chiu and Decker wasted no time setting up their computers. Concentrating on speed and vigilance, they ran a few tests on Wixom’s laptop. Screens beeped, flashed with graphics and coding as Decker typed on his keyboard. After several moments, Chiu bit her bottom lip.

  “It’s just as we feared,” she said.

  “How bad is it?” Nesbitt asked.

  “It’s locked with a six-digit password. We could submit passcodes to attempt entry but the system is designed to autoerase the entire contents after ten failed password attempts.”

  “So that’s it?” Nesbitt said. “We’re locked out?”

  “No, not yet,” Decker said as he shifted to one of the laptops they’d brought with them. “We’ve got a few options.”

  “We’re going to try loading a software image file through a protocol,” Chiu said. “It’ll run from the random access memory. If it works, we’ll then be able to run a password recovery analysis without risk of activating the autoerase function.”

  “It could be a while before we know,” Decker said.

  Nesbitt nodded.

  “Okay, I’ve got to reach the case agent and update him.”

  Nesbitt left the meeting room and called Malko. Afterward, he returned and watched Chiu and Decker, who were immersed but nodding.

  “It worked,” Chiu said. “We’ve bypassed the autoerase. We’re running a passcode recovery analysis. With a little luck we should be able to unlock it and gain entry. No telling how long this could take.”

  Nesbitt stepped away and made fresh coffee.

  When he returned with steaming cups for everyone he saw Decker hunched over the laptop working to the staccato clicking of his keyboard.

  By nightfall the tense mood in the room became upbeat.

  “Bingo!” Decker pumped a fist into the air. “We’re in!”

  The Fifth Day

  73

  Chicago, Illinois

  “The Hudsons have not been ruled out as potential suspects in their son’s disappearance...”

  The next morning in Chicago, Gloria Sayer picked up her phone. She wanted to tell the FBI what she knew but abandoned her call.

  She’d come in early to catch up on work but had been engrossed in the all-news channel she’d cued up on her computer monitor. It had been reporting the same facts in the Hudson case all morning.

  Gripped with indecision she looked out her window at Parker Hayes and Robinson in the Willis Tower, which everyone still called the Sears Tower. She searched the skyscrapers and Lake Michigan for an answer.

  What really happened to Gage?

  Yesterday, Gloria had returned from a vacation in Southeast Asia. She’d first learned about the disappearance of her coworker Faith Hudson’s son while watching CNN between flights in the airport in Honolulu. Gloria had arrived back in Chicago to find the office devastated by the news. It was all people talked about. Some of Gloria’s colleagues had taken to wearing little ribbons; some were volunteering to help search efforts in River Ridge; others took up a collection, to add to the firm’s contribution to the reward for information on Gage.

  And everyone, as Gloria had discovered, had spoken to the FBI.

  “They want to talk to you, too,” Eve Moore in records had told Gloria yesterday. “They want any information that can help, like who might’ve taken Gage, or if we think Cal or Faith could be involved.”

  “Cal or Faith? Really?”

  “Can you believe it? Yes, as absurd as that sounds, they asked if we thought Faith or Cal had acted strange, had said or done anything unusual or out of character in the time before it happened.”

  “Anything?”

  “Anything that might help. You’re supposed to call the lead agent. He left a card on your desk.”

  Now, after watching the news coverage out of Montana, Gloria grappled with a decision. She knew things all right, things no one else knew about Faith—things that clouded her mind with a vengeful bitterness.

  Everyone in the office thought Faith was so wonderful, so pretty. With her handsome husband and beautiful son: the perfect family. They don’t know who she really is—that she cheated when she beat Gloria in the competition for the job she has.

  That was Gloria’s job. Gloria was more qualified than Faith. But Faith was the pretty one. That’s why someone on the hiring committee had slipped Faith the questions before her interview
segment so she could prepare her answers ahead of time. Rosalita, Gloria’s pal in office admin, had confided that little tidbit to her.

  She picked up the agent’s card.

  Yes, Gloria knew things the FBI should know about that bitch Faith. Like how in recent months she’d talked to senior management about a position at one of the firm’s subsidiaries in New Zealand. Rosalita, who hears everything, told Gloria how Faith was very interested in the job abroad, almost like she needed to leave the country.

  She’d also sought a cash advance and had asked for it to be documented as some sort of performance bonus. She wanted it kept off the books.

  Gloria tapped the card in her hand.

  Yes, it’s terrible her son’s missing but if the FBI is still considering her a suspect, well, maybe for the sake of that little angel, someone should step up and tell the truth. Rosalita wouldn’t do it—she feared police because her brother had had some trouble with the law.

  Someone should enlighten the FBI on what Faith was up to long before her son disappeared. Maybe she was involved.

  Gloria looked at the card again, gritted her teeth and made the call.

  74

  River Ridge, Illinois

  Malko was back at River Ridge headquarters that morning and on the phone.

  In the short time since he and Marsh had returned from Montana they’d been engulfed with developments.

  Searchers in Lone Pine still hadn’t located Gage. They’d brought in cadaver dogs in case Wixom had buried him in a shallow grave. They’d found nothing so far. Meanwhile, in Billings, the cyber team was working on opening Wixom’s laptop.

  They needed to nail down Wixom’s claim that a partner beyond McCain and Griner was involved, Malko thought, making calls when Lewin leaned into his office and flagged his attention.

  “Remember Ezekiel Lyman Ezili? He murdered six-year-old Teddie Turco. He claimed police and press framed him for the murder and called on his followers for a ‘day of reckoning.’ We interviewed Thorne, the lead Chicago homicide detective. She doesn’t think there’s a threat or a connection.”

  “What’s your assessment?”

  “We don’t agree. Thorne says Ezili had the boy’s DNA, which sealed the case. An internal investigation into Chicago homicide’s Ezili case fizzled. But Ezili claimed he was framed, and he was stabbed to death in prison ten months ago. What’s your take on this, Tibor?”

  Malko thought for a moment.

  “Until we can analyze the contents of Abel Wixom’s laptop we can’t rule out a possible connection. It’s something we need to put to Cal and we should talk to whoever led the internal investigation.”

  Malko resumed dealing with his calls when Price appeared at his desk.

  “We’ve got the Hudsons waiting in separate rooms,” she said. “We’ve had them here for a long time and they’re demanding answers and updates. Not sure how much longer we can hold them.”

  “We need to talk to them. For one, we need to resolve the question that each of them moved several thousand dollars in cash, enough to cover the amount Wixom paid McCain and Griner for their help. And we’ll need to talk to McCain and Griner again, too. We’ve got to determine who paid who, and who Wixom’s partner is.”

  Malko’s phone rang and he took the call.

  “Tibor, this is Bill Caffrey, ERT. Got some preliminary analysis on the T-shirt found near the Hudson home.”

  “Go ahead, Bill.”

  “The boy’s DNA is present and consistent. The blood matches his.”

  “Any other DNA or trace on the shirt?”

  “Yes, we found canine DNA.”

  “Dog? From our units?”

  “Not ours. We’ve run it through our Canine CODIS system, but no hits. That database usually collects DNA from animals in illegal dogfighting. But there’s a strong indication that stray dogs may have dragged the T-shirt from the Dumpster where the shoe was found, possibly following a scent to the boy’s home.”

  “So how does one shoe end up in Wixom’s camper and other items in River Ridge, Bill?”

  “Well, given the proximity to the fairgrounds, it would be consistent with a frantic effort to change the boy’s appearance, altering it from what the reported description would be. Get him into different clothes, toss what he was wearing. Blood would be consistent with the boy struggling at the time. He may have got scratched or scraped in the struggle.”

  “That fits.” Malko saw Marsh waving to him. “Thanks, Bill. Gotta go.” He ended the call. “What do you have, Sue?”

  “Got a woman on the line, Gloria Sayer. She works with Faith. Says it’s urgent. She was away when we interviewed people at Parker Hayes and Robinson.”

  Malko took the call, listening as Sayer calmly and quickly told him her concerns about Faith’s behavior in the time leading up to her son’s disappearance and her inquiries about working in New Zealand.

  “Oh, and one last thing, Agent Malko,” Sayer said. “One day, when one of our assistants was off sick, I saw Faith at the assistant’s desk using her computer. She said hers wasn’t working. I walked over to the supply cabinet for staples. She didn’t notice me and I was taken aback when I looked at her screen. She was searching sites on how to change her name.”

  After the call ended Malko removed his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose, thinking that they should seize Cal’s and Faith’s passports while cautioning himself once again not to get tunnel vision.

  He looked up to find Marsh holding her phone out to him.

  “Tibor, it’s Nesbitt in Billings. They just hacked into Wixom’s computer. They’re sending everything they found to us now.”

  75

  “Dear Lord.”

  Marsh took in the dizzying array of file folders on the large wall monitor in the darkened River Ridge conference room.

  Agent Joanne Jepson, a cyber expert from the FBI’s Chicago office, was sifting through the files from Wixom’s laptop, which they’d connected to remotely.

  As she worked, nearly a dozen investigators sat at the table, poised to act on any information that would point them to Gage. LAPD detective Norm Howell and his team in Los Angeles were on the teleconference line and simultaneously viewing the data through a secure link.

  “Where do we begin to search?” Malko asked.

  “We’ll start searching files that Wixom would’ve accessed most recently and work back from there.” Jepson’s cursor moved quickly from folder to folder, stopping on the most recent, which was labeled The Operation.

  “Open it,” Malko said, then raised his voice for the speakerphone. “Are you guys in California seeing this, Norm?”

  “We’re seeing it fine.” Howell’s voice was tinny through the speaker.

  Jepson clicked and the folder displayed a file list. Her cursor moved over the dates coming to a document entitled “Vengeance Is Mine.”

  “It’s the most recent file,” Jepson said, clicking on it.

  The document was headed with “Day of Reckoning.”

  “To all the guardians of Illicitum Passio, this is my final dispatch...”

  Howell interrupted. “Hold up. Can we stop, please? I just want to emphasize that Wixom was writing exclusively to an ultrasecret group within Illicitum Passio, a group that supports the abduction, torture and even ritualized murder of its young victims. Illicitum Passio members are pathologically loyal to each other. It’s common for them to exchange details of their activities. They get off on it. As well, Wixom would believe all of his communications were impenetrable, totally secure.”

  “So noted, thanks, Norm.” Malko nodded for Jepson to resume.

  “To all the guardians of Illicitum Passio, this is my final dispatch. As we all know, Ezekiel Lyman Ezili was murdered for a crime he never committed. His death was a result of his imprisonment following his persecution by police and
the media. Chief among his tormentors: Detective E. Thorne and Calvin Hudson of the Chicago Star-News.

  “They know what they did.

  “To ensure ELE’s death was not in vain, the guardians of Illicitum Passio have enacted a plan of retribution. We’ll get to Thorne but our first target is Hudson.”

  Murmuring rippled around the table as Jepson continued scrolling through the note.

  “I worked with the Decanus...”

  “Stop. What’s the Decanus?” Price asked.

  “The Decanus,” Howell said, “is an ancient Roman military rank, like a sergeant.”

  “This could be the partner,” Malko said. “We’ll work on the ID. Keep going through the document, Joanne.”

  “...the Decanus, who had stalked our target for months. We knew where he lived, how he lived.”

  Clear photos of Gage Hudson appeared in the document. Here he was in the schoolyard; here he was walking on the street with friends, at the mall with Faith, at the ballpark.

  “We had considered taking possession at a point of vulnerability. It would’ve been easy. But the Decanus presented another, more fitting strategy, mined from our ability to infiltrate the earLoadzone. There, posing as young enthusiasts of midway thrills, we learned of our target’s desire to experience the Chambers of Dread. He was consumed by it for it was all he talked about. How deliciously fortuitous, given our situation, given our knowledge, given our access! We engaged our target in conversation on earLoadzone and nurtured his desire to the point of success. When we discovered he would be visiting the attraction, preparations were made and we set our operation in motion. Once he entered, he was but a fly caught in the web...”

  A few soft curses went around the group at the table.

  “Events unfolded flawlessly. Once our target was captured in the Chambers, he was secured in a hockey bag and transported through the empty lot behind the apparatus to a van driven by the Decanus. The target’s appearance was hastily and dramatically changed...the Decanus left the area cleanly.”