Girl Taken: A Detective Kaitlyn Carr Mystery

by Gable, Kate

  "I have to be there."

  "Well, it's happening. You want them to wait?"

  "No, absolutely not." I look down at my watch, trying to figure out how fast I can get back down.

  "This commuting thing is really not working out great, is it?" She makes a joke.

  "Three-hour commute? Yeah, I would say not ideal."

  "Okay. Well, let me know when you get here," she says and hangs up.

  I show Captain Medvil my phone and the recording that I made from start to finish. He watches it carefully and then just shrugs his shoulders as if to say, "What am I supposed to do with this?"

  "It's just a bit of the conversation. It doesn't really tell us much one way or another, does it?"

  "I just can’t tell if he had something to do with this," I say.

  "He's our best bet," Captain Medvil says.

  "I know, but he doesn't have a car. I mean, if he killed Violet ..." my voice gets parched when I say the word killed, "why would he kill Natalie, too?"

  "Who says that Violet is dead?” Captain Medvil challenges me.

  "I mean, if he'd taken her or kidnapped her, or is keeping her somewhere, why would Natalie be dead now? I just don't see a thirteen-year-old accomplishing all of this himself, especially since he doesn't drive. What about his dad?”

  “If it was just Natalie missing, it's possible," I say. "They had a very strained relationship, and his dad obviously could have helped him cover it up, but I just don't see how the two cases are related."

  "And they have to be related, right?" Luke says, speaking rhetorically. "I mean, they disappeared under very similar circumstance, they're friends from school. It just doesn't make any sense."

  The three of us nod, thinking about it for a moment. When the phone starts to ring on Captain Medvil’s desk, I excuse myself. I say that I'll be in touch and Luke walks me out.

  "I have to get back to LA."

  "You just got here."

  "I know, it's ridiculous, but the search warrant's going out on the Islington’s boat. I have to be there. I’ll probably have to interview everyone again, try to get more details about what could have happened. Besides, we're still waiting on non-preliminary results from the autopsy and everything else, right?"

  "What about your mom?" Luke asks.

  I’d left her at the memorial to fend for herself, but I’d left her the car and traveled here with Luke.

  "I don't know. She'll just have to deal with it," I say.

  We share a moment standing together in the parking lot. I know that I'm avoiding talking about a lot of things that are important and he's being patient, but this isn't the time.

  “Poison? Do you think that really happened?"

  "Yes.” I reach over and tuck a strand of hair behind his ear.

  This whole case has made me want to run somewhere to try to make sense of everything that's been going on. But the truth is that I can't, there's nowhere to go.

  * * *

  On the drive down, I think about what could have happened to Natalie and Violet. Is it a possibility that this is an isolated incident? That she just happened to be taken by someone else after Violet ran away.

  This is the optimist in me, the ideal situation, Violet ran away and is out there angry with me and Mom, but safe.

  And Natalie? Something bad happened to her. She had gone somewhere and something happened, or she was kidnapped and something bad happened. There's a small chance that the two cases are not related, but at the same time, how could they not be?

  I make my living as a police officer and I make connections between things that aren't right. There's an old saying that cops don't believe in coincidences.

  But at the same time, there are random things that happen in the world. We, as people, want to make sense of the randomness, we try to organize our thoughts, but it doesn’t always fit. Sometimes they are unrelated events that occurred. This optimistic nature is paint against the pessimism, but I've seen my job in the world. I know what I would think. If this were two strange girls who went missing, I would think that the cases were connected, and there was a bad guy out there doing these terrible things to thirteen-year-olds.

  Poison, however, that's a new development. Usually there is some aggression, violence that is enacted against little girls who go missing. The big, bad wolf doesn't just want to poison little Red Riding Hood, he wants to eat her, right?

  My drive back home is long and arduous. I hit all the traffic and I put on an audiobook to keep my mind occupied. That's really the only thing you can do with really bad traffic, escape by being somewhere else. I can't wait until there are self-driving cars out there so that I can actually sit back, take my foot off the pedal, and go through my notes, do some reports or maybe work on my book.

  After miles of driving behind a sea of red lights, I finally get to the marina. The tables and the crime scene tape are already set up. Since it's dark out, there are a ton of standing lights that have been set up in order to facilitate the evidence collection process. I meet with James Ware from the sheriff’s department.

  "Glad you were able to make it. Sorry about the traffic," James says, without extending his hand forward and I give him a professional nod.

  I changed into more professional attire at a gas station right before I got here. Slacks and a jacket, not the winter clothes that I had been wearing up in the mountains.

  "Here, follow me and I'll show you through the crime scene."

  "Crime scene? That's not official, right?"

  "Oh, yes it is," James says with a smirk on his face. "They found a ton of blood that someone tried to clean up."

  Chapter 35

  I follow James down the length of the dock where I get dressed in protective gear to make sure that none of my fibers get on anything and contaminate the crime scene. I get on the boat and see CSI hard at work, looking for fingerprints with little brushes. One nods in my direction and James introduces me. We don't shake hands, but he takes me straight over to the wall.

  "This is where the majority of the cleaned-up blood was found. Once we saw this light up like a Christmas tree we knew that this whole thing was a crime scene,” he says, shining the light to the wall. Big blotches of blue appear where it had been sprayed with luminol.

  "They tried to clean it up and just did an okay job. It’s not visible to the naked eye, but nowhere near good enough."

  "They?" I ask. "Do you know that it's multiple people?"

  "No, no evidence points one way or another. I'm assuming if there were two people killed on this boat and there was this much blood and blunt force trauma, there's probably more than one assailant. Won't know for a while, have a lot of evidence to collect. I suspect that there's a lot more blood over there, but we'll just have to see."

  A few hours later, I go with the deputy to take Marina Oakhurst in for more questioning. We decide to make the strategic choice to talk to Trish and Derek Carlson in the morning after gathering some more evidence from the notary.

  There's a good possibility that in all likelihood, given the amount of blood that we found in the boat, the Islingtons are unfortunately deceased. More tests have to be run to see who the blood belongs to, but given the change in ownership of the boat, I suspect that they were killed in order to transfer the title in their name.

  The last people who saw them were the Carlsons. I rouse Marina out of bed and she looks bewildered and terrified, leaving her husband to take care of her child. She's dressed in lounge pants and a sweatshirt, and that's exactly what she wears to the interrogation room.

  I need her to be scared, terrified of what could happen because I need her to talk.

  "Tell me about how you saw them sign over the paperwork after they came back from the sea trial," I say, sitting down across from her and leaning forward for extra intimidation.

  At this point, I'm glad that I’d changed into my jacket rather than the more casual attire that I sometimes wear. Being an interrogator and being in this place, you have to play
a role. It's not just good cop, bad cop. It's your whole look, your demeanor, the kind of person that you present to the person from whom you expect answers.

  A man who doesn't like women, for example, gets the cool girl vibe from me. “I'm not like the others, I like sports and I know how women can be.” I spew misogynistic statements in order to make him a friend, make him believe that I understand where he's coming from and that he can trust me with the information that he has.

  Marina Oakhurst, on the other hand, she looks terrified. Shaken.

  I don't think that she was part of what happened on the boat, but she's lying about doing her job as a notary, and that's what I want her to admit to. I expect her to put up a little bit of a fight and she does.

  At first she insists that she told me the truth and that she doesn't know anything else. So, I bring out the pictures that I took with my phone of the crime scene.

  "You see all the luminol there? That's blood that was cleaned up. Somebody was murdered here. Two people in all likelihood, and you know what? You're responsible for that."

  "I'm not responsible for anything,” she gasps.

  "You lied about your involvement, you're an accessory. You helped them cover up the crime. You told me that you saw the Islingtons sign over the boat, is that true?"

  "No," she says, hesitating.

  "You didn't?"

  Her shoulders begin to move up and down as she breaks down in tears.

  "They paid me. I lost my job. Notary is all I do and there's just not enough work. I'm having another baby and I just don't know how we're going to afford all the hospital bills and the doctor visits and the formula and the diapers."

  "How much did they pay you?" I lean back, giving her some space to speak.

  I change my voice to a gentler approach. Now that I’ve gotten her to break, I need her to talk. I need her to feel comfortable. I need her to get all of this weight off her shoulders.

  "They paid me $10,000,” she says quietly. “It was so much money. It would have paid off our credit card debts and set us up with a little nest egg. And all they wanted me to do was just say that I saw them sign the papers. They said that they just couldn't be there then, that everything was fine, that they were going to transfer the money. I know, it was so stupid of me. I shouldn't have done it, but they said that if I didn't do it then they'd get someone else."

  I nod. People will believe anything in order to allow themselves to do anything.

  "Are they really dead?" Marina asks in a whisper.

  "There's a lot of blood there. We're still running tests."

  "And am I an accessory?"

  "I don't know. It's up to the district attorney but if you tell me everything and you cooperate, and you testify in court, I'll see what I can do."

  "You'll help me?" Marina asks.

  I nod.

  "So, what happened? You didn't see them come back from the sea trial?"

  "I never met the Islingtons," she admits, picking at a little crack in the table with her short nails. "I never met them. Trish and Derek brought me their signatures from their ID’s and they said that they were traveling, so they couldn't be there in person, but they did the sea trial on their own and everything went well and they were buying the boat."

  "And you didn't think that was suspicious?"

  "It was, and it was illegal and that's why they were paying me the ten grand."

  She begins to sob again. I tell her that it's okay, that I'm here for her because I want to keep her talking.

  “So, where did you sign?” I ask.

  "I met them at the Starbucks by the marina. They just pulled out the papers that they had signed and showed me their IDs. They said that they’d sent the money over. Derek said that they had it, because he was an actor and he had all these savings in a trust fund. And you know, this is LA, people have a lot of money, people you don't suspect."

  "So, at the Starbucks?" I say, keeping her on point.

  "Yeah, at the Starbucks they signed everything over and they showed me the paperwork along with the paperwork that the Islingtons signed. They showed me their IDs and they were a match. So, I thought it's not a big deal, I can do this."

  "And how did they pay you?"

  "In cash. They handed me the money right there and told me to forget their names. But the thing is that I couldn't forget."

  "What do you mean?" I ask.

  "Well, I had to put their names into my notary ledger, otherwise I would be in trouble with the government."

  "Wait a second, you actually wrote them in the ledger?" I ask.

  "Yes, right there, and they signed on the line. I told them that they had to do it. Otherwise, the transaction isn't complete."

  A smile spreads over my face. Oh my God, I can't believe that they were so stupid as to sign the ledger. It was a nail in their coffin.

  "Do you happen to have it?"

  "Yes, back at home."

  "Good. We'll need it for evidence. Is there anything else that you might have left out? Anything at all?"

  "No, that's it. Am I going to be okay?" Marina looks up at me with her big doe eyes. I squeeze her hand to reassure her.

  Chapter 36

  We don't wait to arrest Trish and Derek, but head to their home right away, arrest warrants in hand. We arrive without the lights on, knock on the door. It takes Karen, Trish's mom, a few minutes to answer, during which I impatiently knock.

  When she finally does respond, she says that she has no idea where they are. The deputies burst in past her, search the house, and the couple is gone.

  I curse under my breath and then someone out back yells, "We got them going on Cherry!”

  I follow the car into the street and out of the corner of my eye, I see Karen’s Corvette pull out of a parking lot somewhere in the distance. The only reason I even notice it is because it's such a recognizable car. A white 2002 Corvette tends to stand out.

  Lights blaring, I go first. Derek is driving, quickly getting on the freeway. It's empty this time of night, and I'm glad for that because he starts speeding up, eventually topping out at 110 miles per hour. I know it's him driving because at one point, Trish turns around and looks in her rearview mirror from the passenger seat.

  The streets are empty and we drive fast. Darkness wraps all around me, but my blood pressure continues to go up. Pull over, I say to myself over and over again, trying to get them to stop, but they don't.

  A sense of dread overwhelms me. If something bad is going to happen, I won't be able to stop it. He gets onto the 10-freeway heading east. I don't know if there is an actual destination in mind, or if they are just going to drive until they run out of gas.

  I hear the helicopter hovering over them with the spotlight. It comes closer, and I see Trish pointing up, yelling something, throwing her arms in Derek's face.

  The situation is getting more and more intense, but the drive continues and we all follow. We talk on the secret channel on the radio. A PIT (pursuit intervention technique) maneuver is being planned. That’s a pursuit tactic by which a pursuing car can force a fleeing car to turn sideways abruptly, causing the driver to lose control and come to a stop.

  Derek increases his speed and the two police vehicles in front of me get ready for a PIT position. We drive past billboard upon billboard, advertising marijuana and various strip clubs.

  I watch as one cop pulls alongside the fleeing vehicle so that a portion of the Corvette is aligned with him. He gently makes contact and then steers sharply into the car. But it doesn’t work. Derek speeds up and the deputy spins out of control. I swerve out of the way and keep going.

  Captain Medvil yells on the radio to give them some space. He doesn't want anyone dying in any accident. I continue to drive a hundred miles an hour, staying close behind. They try the PIT maneuver again and this time, the Corvette’s rear tires lose traction and start to skid. The deputy continues to turn in the same direction and the Corvette starts to spin and runs straight into the median.

 
; I jump out of my car, pull out my weapon, and crouch down behind the open door.

  "Police, get out of the vehicle!" I yell.

  From my vantage point, I can see that Derek's body is slumped over the steering wheel. There's a big head wound and he isn't moving.

  Trish yells something. I identify myself again, but I don't know if she can hear anything above her screams and with the windows closed. The door opens and she starts to get out of the car.

  I tell everyone on the radio to stay put, and to not point any of their weapons at her. I'm going to go try to apprehend her.

  "No, absolutely not!” Captain Medvil yells. "She probably has a gun. This is too dangerous."

  "She's pregnant," I say. “I don't care. We can't shoot her, you're going to kill the baby, too."

  They continue to protest but as I leave my car, no one stops me. I see them put their weapons up as I make my way. I walk carefully toward the car with my hand extended, holding the main gun in my hand.

  "Trish, it's me. You have to get out of the car. It's the police," I say.

  She whips her head around, tears streaming down her face. She reaches for the door and gets out.

  "She has no weapon," I say into the walkie-talkie. "Please turn around and put your hands on the car."

  "It's me," she says, "Kaitlin, it's me, Trish. He's dead."

  She begins to cry. This softens me for a moment, but I need her in cuffs.

  "You need to do what I ask."

  Surprisingly, she has only a few bruises on her arms and face, but nothing to even warrant a trip to the ER. She continues to protest a little bit and I insist.

  "Fine, okay.” She puts both of her hands on the car.

  I approach, keeping my weapon on her.

  "Uh," she moans and grabs onto her stomach.

  I see her collapse in half, and a big rock collides with my forehead. My head starts to buzz, and when I reach for it, a knot is already growing. When I pull my fingers away, I see the blood.