Broken Boys_The Extractor

by L. J. Sellers

  Marty gave her a look. “Not all those programs are bad. Some kids come out with a new mindset and go on to live successful lives.”

  “But some are horrible and kids die from abuse or seizures or some other medical neglect.” Anger surfaced in her throat. “More than eighty teenagers have died in those programs in the last twenty years. And no one is ever charged or convicted!”

  “Eighty?” Her stepdad scowled. "That seems high.”

  “It’s ridiculous. And no institution, except the media, actually keeps track. Or regulates the programs.”

  Marty reached over and patted her hand. “I like your new passion, but we can’t save everybody.”

  Rox took a deep breath, surprised she’d gotten so worked up. “I know. But we are going to find and rescue Josh Lovejoy. If he’s been abused, I hope his dad goes to the police.”

  Marty picked up their plates and put them in the dishwasher, talking as he worked. “What do we know about Ridgeline?”

  “Not much. The website gives no information about where the office or the camps are located and offers only a phone number to call. I tried it last night and got a canned message. I’ll try again in a few minutes. From what I read, most of these camps are mobile. The kids and counselors hike into the wilderness and stay out there for weeks or months.”

  “They must have a base camp that runs supplies out to them.”

  “Most likely. Still, finding Josh will be challenging. We’ll have to pull off a major con to get him called back to the base camp. And then we have to find that.”

  Marty paced the kitchen, his face worried. “The transport service, or whoever drives the kids out there, knows where it is. We should start there.”

  “Yes. And we may need to find the program’s office building. I suspect it’s based in Utah, where these camps seem to be concentrated.”

  He turned back. “That’s a long drive. Paying a hacker would be easier.”

  Rox grinned. “You’re getting pretty lawless for an old cop.”

  “Just because something is illegal doesn’t mean it’s immoral.”

  He’d never said that before. “And vice versa,” Rox added. An idea popped into her head. “What if we can get the mother to drive out to the base camp? Convince her that Josh needs medical attention and she has to pick him up? We would follow her, of course.”

  “That could work.” Marty rubbed his stubby gray hair. “I suppose the base camp will be an eight-hour drive.”

  “Probably.” Rox’s work phone rang across the room, and she hurried to her desk to pick it up. An unknown number. Another client? “Karina Jones.”

  “It’s Isaac Lovejoy. I’m calling from the jail. I was arrested yesterday at your office.”

  “I saw.” Rox put him on speaker and walked over to the kitchen table. “For violating a restraining order against your ex-wife.”

  “It’s bullshit. She filed that as an intimidation tactic when we divorced.” Her client was talking fast. “I’ve been to Carrie’s home to pick up Josh dozens of times since then. She’s just striking out because she’s worried that I’ll sue her for forging my signature on the correctional program application.”

  “You know for sure that she did?”

  “I’m guessing. It seems like she would have to. But maybe those camps only need one parent to sign.”

  “Or she lied and told them she had full custody.” Rox looked at Marty and he nodded. She’d asked him to check court records to ensure that their client had joint custody.

  “Either way, I’m fighting her on this.” Lovejoy’s tone was tight with suppressed anger. "Once I get Josh back, he’s not going to her house again.”

  Rox didn’t blame him. “I hope your arrest doesn’t work against your custody challenge.”

  “Oh shit.” Despair made him plead, “You’re still going to find Josh for me, aren’t you?”

  “I’ll try.” Rox glanced at Marty again. He’d taught her to never make promises she couldn’t keep. “But the camp is mobile, so it will be challenging. How long will you be in jail?”

  “That depends.”

  A moment of silence.

  Then Lovejoy asked, “Will you use some of the cash I gave you to bail me out? I promise to pay it back.”

  This was a first. “I’ll think about it.”

  Marty shook his head.

  A loud voice in the background shouted, “Time’s up!”

  “I have to go. Please help me.” Lovejoy hung up.

  Marty took a moment to lecture her about the foolishness of wasting the advance payment on bail, but Rox didn’t respond.

  “Your silence tells me you plan to do it anyway.”

  Rox stood, ready to stretch her long legs. “That depends on how much the bail is. But for a few grand—of his money—I’m not going to let him stay in jail.”

  Marty cut in. “Let’s at least check him out more thoroughly first!”

  “I will.”

  “What’s your plan?” Marty crossed his arms.

  Rox suppressed her annoyance. “I can find people who knew Lovejoy and his wife when they were married and see what they thought of the relationship. I can also talk to his employees at the Steelhead Bistro.” Rox changed her mind and grinned at her stepdad. “Better yet, you can do all that while I start looking for Josh.”

  “I was going to play golf today.” His voice was deadpan.

  “Suit yourself.”

  They both burst out laughing. As much as he liked golf, working a case was irresistible to him. He’d only retired from the department because the full-time pressure of the job had worn on him—and his body. Marty grabbed her grocery-list tablet and ripped off a sheet. “I’m ready.”

  Rox gave him the details she knew about Lovejoy, then stood. “I’ll keep digging into Ridgeline and see what I can learn about it.”

  “I’ll get Bowman to look at police logs and see if Lovejoy and his ex-wife have a history of altercations or 911 calls. Just because he was never convicted of assault doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

  “Thanks.”

  After Marty left, Rox called the county’s pre-trial detention number and asked about Lovejoy’s bail. The twenty grand surprised her, but she only needed to put down ten percent of that. She would give her stepdad an hour to get back to her before she picked up the cash from the office. Most of it would go into the bank before she bailed out her client.

  While she waited to hear from Marty, she sat down with her laptop and opened the Ridgeline Wilderness Health site. While looking for the phone number she’d stumbled on the night before, she scrolled through a marketing pitch with phrases such as the therapeutic effect of nature and accountability through outdoor survival. The website didn’t even list a post office box to mail checks to. They probably didn’t take them—just credit cards over the phone. After a minute of mental prep, Rox called the 800 number and got the message again, which thanked her for calling and asked her to leave contact information and the name of her referral.

  Referral? Interesting. She hadn’t listened long enough last night to hear that part. “This is Jolene McAdams, and I’m desperate to help my son. Please call me.” She started to give her work phone, then switched to her personal number. She always answered her work phone with her Karina Jones business name, and when they called back, the inconsistency might trigger their suspicion. Without a referral, would they even call back? It seemed like they should be eager for her business. She considered calling back and listing Carrie Lovejoy as a reference, then changed her mind. The program administrator might actually call Carrie. Rox hung up. If they didn’t get back to her, she would call again.

  She did a quick search for the phone number and discovered that the prefix was based in Utah. No surprise. Now what? She really needed to find a parent who’d used the Ridgeline program or a kid who’d been through it. Facebook was no help. The only wilderness camps that came up in her search were for adult recreation. The only reference to a correctional camp had been
posted by a newspaper that reported a male teenage camper charged with raping a female counselor. That surprised her. But it shouldn’t have. Many of the kids in those camps were sent there by court order, so some had to be quite troubled, maybe even violent. Josh, her extraction target, could be more problematic than his father was willing to admit. But beating and starving teenagers—like some programs did—wasn’t a solution to delinquency.

  The place to find a teenager was probably Instagram or SnapChat, or whatever the new online hangout was. But she didn’t have an account for any of them. She used the Tracers’ database whenever she searched for missing people, but in those cases, she had a name to work with. Frustrated, Rox opened Craigslist and created a personal ad asking for feedback to help her decide on a correctional camp, specifically mentioning Ridgeline as a strong contender. To help screen out the cranks and perverts, she didn’t include her phone number, listing only a Yahoo email account she didn’t care about as her contact point. She predicted that twenty-some people would email her but that only three or four would have real information. Maybe only one or two would message her to warn about the negative conditions of a particular camp. But those responders might also know the location. Rox repeated the process for the Craigslist site in Salt Lake City, Utah and Reno, Nevada.

  After closing her laptop, she went in search of index cards or any kind of stiff paper. She finally settled on using the back side of old birthday cards and printed out her request in bold letters: If you know anything about Ridgeline Wilderness Health, please contact me. I’m trying to locate a teenager who has a family emergency. Rox listed the Yahoo email address again, then reluctantly added her personal phone number. She could change it with her service provider afterward if she needed to. The plan was to post the little signs at the YMCA and at Carrie’s fellowship. Rox scooped up the cards and a roll of masking tape, then stuck them all in her shoulder bag. Marty hadn’t checked back in yet, but Isaac Lovejoy was still sitting in jail. If she needed her client’s help with information or even pulling off a con job, Lovejoy couldn’t do it from a locked cell.

  Before heading out, Rox googled Common Community Fellowship and found two locations in Portland, with one only a mile from Carrie’s home. The simple website listed all their services on the home page—including a Wednesday night meeting that started at seven. Rox let out a laugh. Attending this service, church or not, would be the strangest thing she’d done yet for a client—besides bailing him out of jail.

  Chapter 8

  After picking up the ten grand from her office safe, Rox stopped at the bank to deposit the bulk of it, then drove downtown to the Justice Center Public Desk. The office was open 24/7, except for three intermittent hours when the clerks took breaks. Rox arrived during the afternoon closure and had to wait twenty annoying minutes. Even though it was probably too soon, she used her phone to check for messages from her Craigslist posting. A guy named Brad had already sent an email, asking if she was lonely and needed a new friend. Rox rolled her eyes. How bored or desperate did you have to be to spend time trolling for suckers?

  She paid Lovejoy’s bail without complications, then briefly considered driving to the jail to offer him a ride home. But it could take hours for the system to process the payment and even more time for the deputies to release him. Rox headed to the YMCA instead. Posting her notice on their bulletin board was probably a waste of time, but she had to start somewhere. As she stepped out of her vehicle, the warmth of the day surprised her. Summer had finally kicked off in the Northwest, where you could only plan an outdoor wedding between mid-July and mid-August. But she spent all winter complaining about the cold, so she never complained about summer heat. Inside the building, she glanced over at the reception counter but didn’t see Carrie. Rox grabbed a pushpin from the corkboard, posted her notice over the top of a tattered Roommate Wanted poster, and hurried back out.

  As she walked to her car, she thought about the articles she’d read detailing the abuse in the wilderness programs, and new research ideas came to her. She could call the reporters who’d written the stories, hoping to get location information, and possibly track down people who’d filed lawsuits. No criminal charges had been pursued by authorities, but maybe a few parents had tried to seek justice another way. Would the camp’s location be listed in the legal documents? Not likely. But the teenagers who’d been through the program had to know, in general, where they’d been. Or did the escorts blindfold the kids on the drive out to keep the location a secret? Damn. This could prove to be her most difficult case.

  At home she turned on the AC, kicked off her shoes, and sat down with her laptop. She opened the most in-depth news story she’d bookmarked, which had briefly mentioned Ridgeline, and searched for the reporter’s information. She finally found Western Life’s Contact page buried three layers deep in the website, accessible only by a small icon in a bottom corner. This magazine really didn’t want to hear from the public. She scrolled through the writers and editors, called Amber Quan’s number, and got her voicemail. Rox left what she hoped was a compelling message: “This is Karina Jones, a private investigator. I’m searching for a teenager who was abducted and taken to the Ridgeline wilderness program. His father didn’t give permission and thinks his son may be suicidal. I need your help finding the camp. Please call me back.”

  While searching for another article by the Salt Lake Tribune, which she’d apparently forgotten to bookmark, Rox stumbled on a lengthy NBC story she’d missed. The graphic details were hard to take and she had to skim through. Its main focus was the Tierra Blanca Ranch in New Mexico, which had been a house of horrors for young kids. After nearly a decade of complaints, federal authorities had finally been called in to investigate—because the local police had kept shielding the business and the money it brought in. The owner had fled and was still missing. Rage and disgust forced Rox to her feet. She paced the room, talking herself down. Her client’s son was not at Tierra Blanca, but if she discovered that the Ridgeline staff was physically abusive, she would make it her personal mission to shut it down.

  When she felt calmer, she sat back down and called the information desk at NBC to ask about the three reporters listed on the story. The first one was no longer employed there, and neither of the other two answered the transferred calls. Rox left them both a message similar to her earlier plea to Amber Quan.

  Stomach growling, Rox went to the fridge and opened it, staring at the emptiness. For someone who liked food as much as she did, there was often little to eat in her house. Because she went through it so fast? Or because she hated to shop—for anything?

  Her work phone rang in the other room, and Rox hurried to answer it, expecting the call to be from Isaac Lovejoy, thanking her for the bail money. But the number was unfamiliar. She picked up. “Karina Jones.”

  “Hello. This is Scott Goodwin. Are you a private investigator?”

  “Yes.” Rox hesitated. Should she tell him she was too busy to even hear about his case? No, this might be something simple Marty could work on—and she liked this guy’s voice. “How can I help you?”

  “My nephew is missing. The police won’t look for him because he’s been in trouble and they consider him to be a young adult who chose to leave home voluntarily.”

  Missing people cases could be very time-consuming. But she had to ask, “How old is he?”

  “Sixteen. His dad, my brother, died a few years back, and Tommy took it hard.” A little catch in the man’s deep voice. “He’s been bouncing back and forth between his mother’s house and mine, but three weeks ago we noticed that neither of us had seen him recently.”

  Another kid on the streets, probably using drugs to mask his grief. Rox had compassion for both him and his family, but it wasn’t her kind of case. “I’m not sure I can help you. Even if I locate your nephew, chances are that if he left voluntarily, he won’t come home.”

  “I realize that. But I want a chance to talk to him and convince him. I know I’ll never find him on
my own.” It wouldn’t be easy for her either. But she hated to turn this guy away. His pain and compassion were palpable. Before she could respond, he blurted out, “I don’t think Tommy left voluntarily.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think my sister-in-law might have sent him to one of those outdoor camps.”

  A tingle ran up Rox’s spine, an experience she’d never had before. Was a correctional program targeting women in the Portland area with troubled sons? “What’s the name of the outfit?”

  “I’m not sure. Donna, my dead brother’s wife—or widow, I should say—denies sending Tommy. But she talked about it once when he first started to skip school and stay out late.”

  “She has custody, correct?”

  “Yes, but I was Tommy’s stand-in father while my brother was stationed in Afghanistan for years. We’re very close.”

  She couldn’t do an extraction for a non-custodial parent or guardian, but she might be able to help him anyway. “I’m working another similar case now, so I’ll consider yours.” She needed more information before she decided how to handle this. “Do you have time to come to my office tomorrow?”

  “Maybe on my lunch hour. Where are you located?”

  “I’ll text you the address.” Rox hesitated, not sure what to request for a fee. It was a missing-person case, but she might get lucky and find Tommy when she found Josh. “I’ll need a two-thousand-dollar retainer, against an hourly rate of two hundred.” She paused, but he didn’t react, so she added, “You could waste a lot of money paying me to search the streets for him.”

  “Will you check those wilderness programs first? I really think that’s where he is.”

  “They’re pretty secretive. And since you don’t have custody, you have to accept that all I can do is locate him for you.”