Last Seen

by Rick Mofina

  The document continued with the next steps of the operation.

  “I cooperated with police in the ensuing investigation, then citing a family emergency I left Chicago for Vancouver to await our arrangement to secure counterfeit passports and documentation for the prize to be delivered to Bangkok. Until then the Decanus was safely hiding with our cargo in our so-called Fortress of Solitude, a location so befitting as a tribute to ELE. You must see it!”

  A color photo surfaced showing an old log cabin nearly swallowed by dense woods, a rusted metal wagon wheel leaning on a post near the hand pump water well on the sagging porch.

  “However, I regret to report that I’ve been overtaken by circumstance and have failed in my duty. In my exhaustion while driving to my destination, I crashed in this godforsaken and forgotten corner of Montana and severely injured my head. I am in great pain. My plan to obtain a rental and continue was futile. I saw my name and face televised nationally. Police here have moved with terrifying speed. And now, as I talk to you, I hear them calling for me.

  “My hands tremble as I write for my journey in this life has ended. But all the guardians of Illicitum Passio must never forget: ELE committed no crime. He knew what Thorne and Hudson did, but no one—not even his lawyer—would listen to him. In their minds he’d already been convicted. Thorne and Hudson are the guilty ones. A toll must be exacted. We started with Hudson. I hope the fortress will one day be a secret shrine that will be a destination for guardians of Illicitum Passio to make a pilgrimage.

  “Because Hudson helped cause the death of an innocent man, I call on the Decanus, to take the blood of his son.”

  The face of every investigator in the room hardened.

  A still photograph flashed on the screen showing Gage, his hair shorn, his eyes wide with fear, as he lay in his underwear, gagged and bound to a bed as the message ended.

  “To the Decanus, I cry: Save yourself and kill him now!”

  76

  They had brought Cal back to headquarters that morning and had hurried him into the conference room, seating him at the end of the table closest to the wall monitor.

  The screen was blank.

  He saw an agent, at her laptop, ready. He took in the others, looking at him, assessing his unshaven face, his mussed hair, his red-rimmed eyes. Their expressions were taut, sober. Something horribly monumental was coming and a moment of silence passed before Malko started.

  “Cal, new evidence has surfaced and we need your help with it.”

  “Did you find Gage?”

  “No.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? What the hell happened in Montana with Wixom?”

  “We need to show you something and it’ll be extremely hard to face.”

  Bracing himself, Cal cursed under his breath.

  “Remember that after you see this we need your help.” Malko nodded and someone cut the lights.

  The agent at the laptop began typing on her keyboard. The wall monitor came to life as she moved her cursor along the same path to the folders and files the investigators had seen. For the next several minutes as she clicked and scrolled, the only sounds in the room were the hum of the ventilation fan and Cal’s breathing as he read the message calling for revenge against him and viewed the photographs.

  When they came to the last one, Cal was confused and thought, Is that a mannequin? A horror-house zombie doll? Some sort of twisted joke? Then in a sickening heartbeat he realized it was Gage on the bed, stripped to his underwear, bound and gagged, head shaven, eyes bulging with fear.

  My son.

  The screen went blank with Wixom’s last words thundering in his brain. “Save yourself and kill him now!”

  Cal felt his soul ripped from him, his mind flailing as he plunged from reality into an abyss. He slouched in his chair, cupped his hands over his nose and mouth. His eyes burned; his breath locked in his lungs. His throat ached with rage at himself, rage at Thorne—all wrapped with guilt at being so selfishly stupid, so unforgivably stupid, as he fought to cry out for his son.

  Malko put his hand on his shoulder.

  “Cal, I’m so sorry to put you through this. But it’s crucial that you hear me. We believe Wixom sent his message out to his underground group. We’re working against time doing everything we can to locate the cabin and find Gage. We’re going through every database we can for records on Wixom, Ezili and anyone possibly linked to them. We’ve got our cyber and photography people studying the image. We’ve reached out to national security to use satellite and GPS mapping protocols to identify the images. We’ve called in Elka Thorne to help us determine who Wixom’s partner, the Decanus, is. This is where we need you.”

  Struggling to think, Cal nodded and Malko rolled his chair so that he was sitting directly in front of him and staring hard into his eyes.

  “What is Wixom’s allegation against you about Ezili?”

  Cal stared back, slack-jawed, without speaking.

  “Cal, what does he mean when he claims Ezekiel Ezili committed no crime? That you and Thorne are guilty, that you know what you did?”

  Cal was silent—dumbstruck.

  “In his letter from prison published in the Sun-Times, Ezili claimed he was innocent, that he was set up for the murder of six-year-old Teddie Turco, that your reports about him were police-fed fiction, and called on his supporters for a day of reckoning. Cal, is it true?”

  Cal began shaking his head; tears streamed down his face.

  “What did you do, Cal?”

  Cal swallowed.

  “Listen to me!” Malko cried. “This information could be the key. This is no time to hold back. What in the world could be more important than your son’s life?”

  “I can’t—I can’t...”

  “You can’t what?”

  “I can’t carry this anymore—Oh God, I never thought it would—”

  “Cal, we’re running out of time.”

  “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you what we did.”

  77

  Cal dried his eyes and nose with tissues.

  “I never believed this was connected. Ezili was dead—the case was buried. I swear to God that if I knew it was connected, that it would help us find Gage, I would’ve come to you—but I just couldn’t believe it was possibly linked. I was such a fool.”

  Malko was stone-faced, waiting for answers.

  “You’ve talked to Thorne,” Cal started, “you’ve studied the case, so you have most of the background on Ezili and Teddie Turco. How, nearly every weekend, Teddie’s mother took him to the General Union Mall on the West Side. Ezili was a part-time security guard there and became obsessed with Teddie.

  “He learned their routine. Ezili knew that Teddie’s mother let him go to a pet store alone while she shopped at the clothing boutique across from it. She could see him but not all the time. There were gaps. Ezili knew this as he stalked them, just as he knew when the security cameras worked or didn’t work, just as he knew nonpublic entrances and exits. Ezili was good at luring and, one day on his day off, he lured Teddie away from that pet store and took him to his apartment where he raped and tortured him for several days before dumping his body in a ravine on the south side.

  “I led on coverage for the Star-News, that’s how I know Elka Thorne. She came to like me, trust me, leak details to me. In covering the case I talked to Teddie’s family.” Tears slid down Cal’s cheeks. “I’ll never forget how his mother held his framed photograph in her arms the whole time she talked to me. I thought of Gage and it ripped my heart out.”

  Cal paused for a minute, trying to compose himself.

  “I interviewed store staff,” he then continued, “mall security, including Ezili. I found him intelligent, a charmer, and I struck up a rapport with him. He seemed the most intere
sted in the status of the case and would meet me on his own time, even invited me to his apartment to trade ideas and information.

  “At the time, I never knew he was the prime suspect.

  “After a couple of weeks the story faded and I moved on to others. But I kept chipping away on the Turco case. I’d go to Ezili, and other security guards, to see if they’d heard anything new. Of course I’d check with Thorne on the status of the investigation.

  “One day Thorne reached out to me. She wanted to talk off the record and made me swear that I’d never repeat a word. I agreed and when we met she opened up about Ezili. I’ve never told anyone what I’m telling you. Thorne said they knew without a doubt that Ezili killed Teddie. She told me how Ezili was also suspected of killing a seven-year-old boy in Pittsburgh the same way a few years earlier but that detectives there never had enough evidence to charge him.

  “In Teddie’s case, Thorne said Ezili’s alibi didn’t hold up but absolutely everything pointed to him. But all they had was circumstantial evidence. She feared that he was going to get away with it, move away and kill again, leaving a trail of child corpses in his wake, and there was no way to stop him without irrefutable evidence.

  “I grew angry and said that they needed to nail Ezili. That’s when she said there was a way and only I could help because Ezili trusted me. Thorne suggested I visit Ezili, then secretly leave something in his apartment.”

  “Leave something?” Malko said.

  “Yes, but I was reluctant. I told her that it was wrong but then she showed me crime scene photos of Teddie and the Pittsburgh boy and said, ‘What if this was your son? What if he does it again? Will you be able to live with yourself knowing you could have saved the life of the next boy?’ Those pictures were...” Cal released a shaky breath. “I thought of Gage, thought of Teddie’s mother hugging that photograph of her murdered child. All the while Thorne kept telling me that we had to stop this monster.”

  “So you agreed?” Malko asked.

  He bit his bottom lip and nodded slowly. “Yes. She gave me a small vial of Teddie’s blood she’d gotten from the crime scene. I contacted Ezili with some BS tip that they had a suspect, another guy. He was eager to talk and invited me to his apartment. At one point I used his bathroom and dabbed the tiniest dot of blood on the side of the counter, a towel and cleaning brush under his sink, as Thorne directed. The next day, she got a search warrant and Ezili was charged and ultimately convicted.”

  “So you planted evidence?”

  “Yes.”

  “You and Thorne committed a crime?”

  “Yes.”

  “And none of this came up in court?”

  “No. We’d heard that Ezili, through his lawyer, tried to dispute the evidence but the court dismissed it because it was overwhelming. Teddie’s blood pulled all the other evidence together.”

  Malko kept shaking his head.

  “Ezili had to be stopped,” Cal said.

  “This is why his disciples in Illicitum Passio carried out the vendetta and targeted Gage,” Malko said. “We found secret dispatches where he’d claimed to them that you and Thorne had set him up. Cal, why didn’t you tell us at the outset?”

  “Because Ezili was dead. For me that ruled out any chance he’d be involved. How could he? When I dug into his life, I never turned up any solid connection to this underground network. Ezili was smart but he was largely a loner and didn’t come across as being skilled at using the dark web, even though I should’ve realized that’s where monsters like him like to dwell. He struck me as a pitiful loner. And with his murder in prison, how the hell could he ever be connected to Gage? First, I suspected a carny or a stranger took Gage. Then because of Faith’s affair, I thought maybe she and Tate really were behind it as some sort of preemptive custody move. Or maybe I just built a wall around the idea that what I did to Ezili could be connected to Gage. It was a secret I’d kept for years, one that would end my career and take away my freedom if anybody ever found out. I just never, ever thought it would turn into a war against me. What have I done?”

  His hands were shaking when he covered his face with them.

  “Cal, planting evidence is a felony. You could face prison time.”

  He nodded. “I know. I expect that. Are you going to arrest me, charge me, now?”

  “We’re not charging you at this time. You’re free to move about for now, but we’d advise you to get an attorney. Maybe you could plea and seek felony probation, but we’re getting ahead of things because we first need to talk to the state’s attorney, so charges are pending.”

  “Does that mean I’m no longer a suspect in Gage’s case?”

  Malko took a long breath and let it out slowly. “Let’s just say recent events have allowed us to focus the investigation. Right now, we need to identify Wixom’s partner and locate the cabin. Do you have any information that can help? Anything from your dealings with Ezili?”

  Cal concentrated. “I can’t think... I—” He lifted his head and studied the wall monitor that was now blank. He searched it as if he could decipher or extract the key to finding Gage from the horror displayed there minutes ago.

  It was futile.

  “I’m sorry, there’s nothing.”

  An agent entered the room and spoke softly into Malko’s ear. He nodded, stood, reached for his phone, then said to Cal, “We just got two possible leads on the cabin.”

  “Where?”

  Malko weighed the risks of telling him.

  “Tell me, Malko. I deserve to know.”

  “Minnesota and Wisconsin. We’ve got people moving on both.”

  “Which one is stronger? I’ll go there.”

  “No, Cal. Go home.”

  “You just said I’m free to go wherever I wish.”

  “Yes, but we think you should go home. We’ve already sent Faith home. We’ll have someone drive you. Go, be with her. We’ll keep you updated.”

  A few minutes later, a River Ridge cop was driving Cal back to his house.

  The officer didn’t say much and kept his radio low. Neighborhoods rolled by but Cal didn’t see them. He sobbed in silence as the image of his son, his only child—bound, gagged and condemned to death—burned in his mind.

  Oh, Gage, I’m so sorry.

  78

  Cal stepped from the patrol car and shouldered through the news crews clustered in front of his house as questions were hurled at him.

  “Did they find Gage alive?”

  “Did Wixom confess?”

  Cal made it to his door, fumbled for his keys and rang the bell, with the officer waving reporters back to the street—You’re trespassing now, people, step off! But the questions kept coming.

  “What happened in Montana?”

  “Cal, give us a statement, come on!”

  The door was opened by Rory Clark.

  Family friends were in the living room, huddled around Faith. Detectives Price and Lang observed from the side.

  Faith looked at Cal and stood.

  As if a switch were thrown, the air tightened. Some of the women tried to hold her back before she walked up to Cal and slapped him full across the face.

  The whip-crack of her palm against his cheek was followed by embarrassed silence. Startled by the blow, ears ringing, Cal ached to explain. Tears were streaming down Faith’s face, which was twisted with rage and disdain.

  “I hate you,” she shrieked as if trying to inject her words into him. “Because of you they’re going to find my baby dead!”

  “Faith, please, you have to understand—”

  “Oh, I understand. Price and Lang spoke to Malko and told me everything, told me what you did to Ezili. You set this all in motion! You knew about this all along and said nothing! Nothing!”

  “Faith, please, it was complicated. I—”

  “No! It a
ll comes down to your selfish, insane pursuit of a glorious story. Well, you’ve got one and you killed my child! Are you happy now? Get out of my sight, get out of my life—get out!”

  Shaking, gasping with choking sobs, Faith closed her hands into fists and punched at Cal’s face and chest. He struggled to hold her before she surrendered and went limp, collapsing at his feet, broken in her grief.

  Like comforting angels, Samantha Clark, Michelle Thompson, Pam Huppkey and their husbands swooped in and took Faith up to her bedroom to recover while most everyone threw piercing, accusatory looks at Cal.

  Overcome with shame, guilt and fear, Cal retreated to the kitchen where he stood alone in his anguish, staring into the backyard. Their yard, where Gage had played as a toddler in the wading pool, where he’d learned to throw and catch a baseball, ride his bicycle, where he’d lived the everyday life of a kid.

  Lived.

  Was he dead?

  The image of Gage nearly naked, eyes bulging, hair shorn, gagged and bound to a bed in some isolated cabin, burned through his mind like acid.

  Why did they have to take him? This was my war, take me. Kill me.

  Cal gripped the counter.

  Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Do something!

  The cabin.

  Where was it? Malko wouldn’t reveal the location, but Cal had caused this so he needed to fix it. He needed to be there to fight for Gage—or to hold him one last time.

  I can’t wait here, helpless, letting it all happen.

  Where was that cabin? Think!

  Something pinged in Cal deep beneath the surface of his consciousness, a blurred idea, or memory of somewhere remote, secluded, solitary.

  Fortress of Solitude.

  Now, in his moment of absolute desperation, he prayed as he summoned all of his concentration to remember. Maybe it was triggered by the horrible image of Gage at the cabin, maybe it was psychological sting of Faith’s slap, or the savage guilt gnawing at his heart, but with a Herculean effort Cal drew upon every fiber within him, straining and clawing like a madman to smash through the door where the answer lay.