All That Remains (A Missing and Exploited Suspense Novel Book 1)

by Hannah Holborn

  «20»

  Gabriel isn’t shivering anymore and he can’t feel his arms and legs either. He sits on a cot wearing a blanket Willard has tossed at him around his shoulders. He realizes he’s only listening to Willard try to light damp matches, not watching. He forces his sagging eyes open; Willard doesn’t like people who nap before supper. It’s a sluggard’s behavior and against the household rules Gabriel must now follow or be punished.

  The smell of smoke tickles Gabriel’s nose. In the small, one-room skunky-smelling cabin, Willard watches a fire that crackles in the fireplace a few feet away from the cot. The heat from the fire burns as it thaws Gabriel’s body. He whimpers and tries to get away from the pain that follows him wherever he moves.

  “Shut it,” Willard warns.

  Gabriel stifles his cries. Once, when he was in kindergarten, he pulled a pot of hot soup off the stove and burned his arm. When they got home from the hospital Celine turned on Sesame Street and pulled him onto her lap, where he stayed for hours. He closes his eyes, pretending the pain is Celine stroking the hurt with her fingers, making it both worse and better at the same time.

  Willard eats first when the baked beans hung in a pot over the fire are warm. He soaks a piece of bread in the juice and then stuffs it in his mouth. His small eyes find Gabriel, drawn by the sound of his rumbling stomach.

  “What’s the rule?” Willard asks.

  Gabriel lowers his gaze to the floor. “Adults eat first. Youngsters wait their turn.”

  “Good,” Willard says. “You’re learning.”

  «21»

  The uniformed pigs rooting around Celine’s home are wasting time: she’s told them over and over again Gabriel’s not there. Not that they’re searching for Gabe inside. Celine knows their little hearts desire proof that she or Elvis wasted the kid and disposed of the body. The worst of the lot is Detective Harvey Sam, the same asshole who blabbed on her to Social Services and who now refuses to let her enter her own home to get the things she needs.

  He blocks her from going past the end of the walkway where the yellow crime scene tape starts. The encounter is watched by a couple of nosy pigs who are supposed to be digging through the snow out front of the apartment building. She raises her mirrored compact to eye level, to fix her lips while avoiding the detective’s scrutiny. When he asks the same question for the third or fourth time, she says, “The tap and trace on my phone ain’t happening, buddy. Quit badgering me.”

  When the asshole raises a hand with a closed fist, she betrays her fear of pricks in uniform by flinching, an involuntary response he sees. He backs away as if the air between them is hot enough to scorch. He has to pull the hand back to his side with what seems like a huge effort; she suspects she’d be one more flippant answer away from experiencing the man’s worst if they didn’t have an audience. It’d almost be worth taking a blow to end the bastard’s police career.

  But then, who’d look for her missing angel? God knows she can’t anymore, not in the shape she’s in. As much as she hates to admit it Celine’s relying on the pig.

  Celine’s dressed for work in borrowed clothes and the cop’s dark eyes pass judgment on her micro-mini and thigh-high black boots. What does he think—she can put her career on hold forever because her baby’s missing? She has pressing needs to take care of. She needs something to bring down her anxiety and rent’s overdue: If she gets evicted how will Gabriel know where to find her when he comes home?

  The thought of the boy wipes the smirk off of Celine’s face. Gabriel’s been gone too long, given what Celine knows about the dark side of humanity. Whatever he’s up against can’t be good. Still, she won’t give the cop what he wants. She can’t allow access to her work phone and betray her regular johns.

  Celine watches the spunk drain out of the man’s expression; he’s read her mind. He’s short to begin with, and now he seems to shrink. “Your son might call,” he says. “If he does, we can trace his location.”

  Celine waves the rhinestone-studded cell phone in front of the man’s face. “D’ya think I raised my son to be an idiot?” she says. “He knows I always got my cell on me. When he calls, I’ll ask him where he is. Then you can go fetch him.”

  “I’ll get a warrant, ma’am.”

  Celine drops the phone into a spangled purse. She’s not stupid; she knows Gabriel’s probably beyond making calls. “Then get it,” she says. “Now move out of my way. I’m running late.”

  «22»

  Harvey hates himself for missing Effie’s call while he was battling it out with Celine Wheeler. He let the call from an unknown number go to voice-mail, but the person on the other end was silent, leaving only the hum of a nearby roadway to speak for her. Despite a lack of proof, Harvey’s certain Effie was behind the silence, using her allowance and risking Pam’s wrath to reach out. Back at the precinct, he traced the call to a gas station pay phone near Casper, Wyoming.

  Effie probably wanted to laugh with Harvey about the town named after a friendly ghost. He imagines her as confused, frightened and in need of a comforting word from her dad. Missing Effie triggers a physical response that surprises Harvey. He expects grief so thick it will swallow him whole. What he doesn’t expect is pain to leave him winded and unable to rise from his desk during the crucial first hours of a possible parental homicide or stranger abduction case.

  He wrestles with his grief, determined to focus his attention on what he hopes isn’t the felony case he foolishly wished for. Due to limited resources, Harvey is doing triple duty as supervisor, investigative coordinator and search coordinator. The day has sped to a close without a break. Harvey does a mental check of the efforts he has put into motion. He has broadcast a “Be on the Lookout” for Gabriel using a photograph supplied by the boy’s teacher. Officers throughout the country are on alert to locate and detain the boy if found. Gabriel is entered into the National Crime Information Center Missing Persons File as “endangered” and Harvey has drawn on his limited staffing to create a Crime Analysis Unit. His officers are committed to working overtime. They are doing person-pattern analysis between the missing child and local known offenders. They are digging through snow and going door-to-door.

  To avoid screw-ups, Harvey has established a tip file and an official master case file. He checks off the various investigative tasks he’s assigned to his team, hoping he can trust them to sniff out anything of suspicion at the boy’s school, home and areas of play. A seasoned officer will vet the volunteers and prevent the main suspects, Celine and Elvis, from participating in the search.

  Verna drops by Harvey’s desk to leave him a fresh mug of hot chocolate. She touches Harvey’s photo of Effie, her honorary grandchild. The motion flicks a switch in Harvey’s head and all he can think of is Effie out there somewhere, missing her home, her turtle and Harvey. It’s late, so she’s probably asleep in a hotel room while Pam watches the Shopping Channel.

  Effie is out there, but she’s safe, unlike Gabriel Wheeler. Harvey gives himself thirty seconds to pull it together or put someone better in charge of the case. At twenty seconds Harvey takes a breath. At twenty-five he sits up straight. At thirty he gets to work.

  ¤

  As he dumps his shoes and coat on the hallway bench, Harvey can smell the dust that has settled in his house in the hours he’s been away, He pauses to torture himself with the sight of the empty living room, then enters the kitchen. If he’s going to sleep soon he needs caffeine. His body does things ass-backwards like that, always has. His body taking its cues from the way he lives his life.

  One of Pamela’s final communications, a yellow Post-it note with curled edges, sits on the counter by the coffeemaker where she has left it. We Have To Talk. The Have is underlined twice. Direct and firm, like Pamela. The lipstick kiss is missing, although Harvey hasn’t seen one of those on Pamela’s notes since their second year together.

  “So talk,” Harvey says to the note. “No one’s stopping you.”

  “Squaws. Can’t live with
‘em, can’t live without ‘em.” It’s a sideways joke courtesy of Harvey’s deceased dad. Harvey’s Native, not Pamela, and therein lies half the problem with their relationship. Harvey’s approach to life is holistic, all-encompassing, and respectful. Pam, however, would happily rape the earth, decimate species, and marginalize people if it meant she could get more stuff.

  Harvey brews coffee. He pours himself a cup, taking it black after checking the refrigerator for milk, then carries the steaming liquid down the hallway.

  The house Harvey inherited from his parents is so small it only takes a few steps to reach the first of two bedrooms. The house was one of Pamela’s many complaints; she couldn’t understand why he didn’t agree Effie deserved something better than being packed into a room too small to fit anything more than a bed and a dresser. But Effie also had acres to play in and her choice of three sturdy tree houses. More importantly, Harvey’s family home was full of memories that couldn’t be packed up and moved with the dishes.

  Harvey lifts lids, opens doors and pulls drawers, leaving both closet and dresser exposed. Everything Effie owns is gone now except for the presents Harvey bought for her. It brings tears to his eyes to imagine his little girl lonesome for her toys.

  There’s some truth to Pamela’s claim that Harvey fell harder for her daughter than he did for her. He said Effie’s prayers with her at night, made her laugh and healed her heartbreaks. Harvey believes doing those things makes him the girl’s daddy, if not her father.

  There isn’t anything he wants to see in the room he shared with Pamela. He heads back to the living room with Effie’s beloved Mr. Turddy in hand.

  The alarm clock, pillow and blanket are waiting where Pamela dumped them. He won’t use the bed until after he washes Pam from the sheets, so sets the clock for a noon wake-up, then settles his five-foot-six body on the over-stuffed leather cushions.

  The coffee has begun to work its magic. He closes his eyes, allowing his thoughts to change tracks. Of all the things in the world only two are worth thinking about, Effie and Gabriel Wheeler.

  The boy’s trail is cold because of bad choices made by people who should have been on watch. If Harvey had prioritized his time with Effie and called in the stranded driver to the precinct, another officer would have been the foolish girl’s hero. Harvey’s presence at the school a few minutes sooner might have deterred Helena from breaking Effie’s leg.

  The boy’s teacher, Launa Granger, is also guilty. She should have kept her nausea at home where it belonged. When forced to seek a bathroom she should have left a responsible adult in charge of the children or at least dragged herself back to the auditorium to do a head-count before the children departed for the night.

  It’s astounding not one of Gabriel’s classmates or the parent volunteers noticed his absence and a few hadn’t even noticed his presence. More than one child and a harried mother stated the boy never came to after-school events. Gabriel was the Invisible Boy.

  The lion’s share of guilt, however, belonged to Celine Wheeler. Despite her many flaws, Pamela always took good care of her daughter, but Gabriel’s mother didn’t even notice her child was missing until he’d been gone all night. Then she waited hours before calling the police, probably because she needed a fix. By the time Harvey secured the apartment Gabriel shared with his mother and her seedy boyfriend, the idiots had tampered with almost everything. The boy’s Superman pajamas were the only uncontaminated pieces of clothing available for the police bloodhound to sniff.

  Harvey covers his eyes with his pillow to block out squares of darker paint on the walls where photos of Effie used to hang. The only pictures Pamela left are those Harvey snapped of Effie when he took her to visit his dad’s relatives on the reserve last summer. One is a group shot of the extended family. His redheaded, green-eyed girl is dressed in borrowed regalia, looking mercifully clueless about how poorly she fit in.

  Because Celine didn’t have photos of her son, they had to use a photograph of Gabriel Wheeler taken by his teacher half an hour before the abduction. In it, he wears a shabby angel costume. Harvey isn’t sure what shocked him more, Celine Wheeler’s disregard for her child’s whereabouts, or that she couldn’t produce a single picture of the beautiful boy. To his mind, Celine Wheeler is guilty of her son’s death even if this is a stranger abduction as she claims.

  “Enough,” Harvey says. If he is going to think of Gabriel as dead, he might as well pack in the search right now. Celine and her boyfriend might be nothing worse than neglectful. And, if the boy was abducted, there is nothing to say he has to be one of the seventy-four percent of children who are dead within three hours of abduction. There is nothing to say he won’t be one of the handfuls who survive.

  Harvey was raised to believe in the interconnectedness of all living things. Some small part of him manages to believe the boy will receive the message when he whispers, “Hang tight, Gabriel, I’ll find you. Hang tight, Effie baby. Daddy loves you.”

  A moment later, the coffee works its magic. Earned or not, Detective Harvey Sam gets his sleep.

  «23»

  Gabriel counts day three in the cabin as he swings his feet off the bunk and sets them down on the frosty floor. He still feels sleepy because the cold and the pain in his shoulder kept him awake all night.

  There’s just enough morning light for him to see the outlines of the two chairs and a table and Gabriel’s foot knocks over the bucket they use to pee in. Despite the clatter, Willard keeps sleeping, and Gabriel carefully feels around to put the bucket right. Urine from last night is frozen at the bottom. He kneels on the cold floor to pee as quietly as possible, but it still hits the ice with a loud tinkle.

  The smell of last night’s supper makes Gabriel’s mouth water. The few bites he received when the man was finished satisfied his hunger for a while, but now his belly is empty again. He goes to a bag of bread open on the table. The plastic rustles as he pulls one soft slice through the opening. He takes his treasure to one of the cabin’s two small windows to eat.

  It’s getting light out and Gabriel tries to remember which direction the sun rises in, east or west. He’s already forgotten a lot of what Miss Granger and his other teachers taught him. The class memorized the world’s continents after Thanksgiving, but Gabriel can only remember three now. As a special project, they made a wall map with something different glued on to represent each land mass. Even though he helped with the project, he can’t recall what the map looked like when it was finished. Miss Granger promised Gabriel she’d let him take the map home after Christmas. If he misses much more school, she’ll probably give it to one of the other kids instead.

  They drove for hours to get here, and he wonders if he’s still in North America. After a snowy field there’s only a dark forest. Near a shed, there’s one giant tree without any leaves. Gabriel knows trees go into hibernation because they can’t get water in the winter when the ground is frozen. Even though it wouldn’t be able to help him if it was, he wishes the tree were awake, then he wouldn’t feel so alone.

  He stares at the shadows and pretends they hide Celine and Elvis waiting for the right moment to rescue him. It’s too hard to pretend for long. His mom and her boyfriend might look for him, but not this far away. The pink Cadillac has summer tires, and Celine doesn’t have the kind of boots that can take a person through deep snow.

  Miss Granger would want to help him. She told him once if he was ever in trouble to come to her, but she’s so old she has to quit teaching next year, plus she’s sick. The only other grownup person who would want to help him is his father, but Celine always says for all the good he does them, his father might as well not exist.

  “Morning, Terrance,” the man’s voice says behind him.

  Gabriel hides what’s left of the bread beneath his angel sheet. “I’m Gabriel Wheeler.” It’s the worst possible thing to say. For now, though, saying it makes it still true.

  «24»

  It’s nasty Principal Johnston’s fault Hele
na’s late for class. He spent way too much time lecturing her about her selfish and irresponsible behavior. Now the whole class turns to stare when she opens the door. By the time she reaches her seat, all their eyes are back on the front of the classroom.

  The librarian, Mrs. Murphy, stands beside Helena’s teacher looking like she’s about to cry. It isn’t Effie she’s upset about though. It’s the poster of Gabriel Wheeler in his angel costume. Even though he’s on Missing Person posters, Gabriel doesn’t look like he knows he’s lost. When Helena’s mom drove to buy medicine for her dad, Helena saw Gabriel smile all over the town of Fenny. His picture is stapled to telephone poles, taped up in store windows, and blown up big for the school office. Each time she sees him, Helena hopes his kidnapper let him change out of his angel costume. She had to wear wings and a halo for the Christmas play in grade two and they made her feel itchy.

  “If there ever really was one, we don’t believe the kidnapper would still be in the area,” Mrs. Murphy informs the class, “but just in case, we ask that none of you walk home alone.”

  “Except for Helena,” one of the girls says loud enough for the whole class to hear.

  Mrs. Murphy hushes the snickering children, and then does a stupid demonstration of what they should do if Gabriel’s kidnapper tries to grab them next. She hardly moves and doesn’t even raise her voice to demonstrate how to kick, scratch, scream, and run. If Helena’s mom were here, she’d be loud and pretend to draw blood because she used to be a beautiful actress.

  “I need a volunteer,” Mrs. Murphy says. Most of the kids put up their hands. Helena does too, out of habit. She won’t get picked, not after what happened at the Winter Extravaganza. She probably won’t get picked for anything fun ever again.