by Alex Gates
“She.”
“Then where is she?”
I pointed to the photo taped to the whiteboard. “The same place a lot of missing persons are ending up. At Harvest Dominion farm.”
Falconi pitched his paper coffee cup and miraculously sipped from a new full one. “Wait. That church has the baby?”
“And this girl.” I tapped the picture. “This is Anna Prescott. She’s been missing for fifteen years—a presumed runaway from Braddock. Last seen on July 5th, 2002.”
“Holy shit…” Falconi squinted at the white board. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely.”
Riley knew my game. “Wait, wait wait. Not the right question. Are you sure?”
I hesitated. “It’s…complicated.”
“No. It really isn’t.”
“I didn’t pull out her hair for a DNA sample.”
“Then what did you do?” he asked.
“A visual assessment.”
“You took her picture,” Riley said. “You need more than that.”
“I’ve got a witness who says she could identify Anna’s kidnapper. She’s the one who spotted the vehicle. She’s the one who gave me a partial on the license plate. It led me to this charity or church or whatever the hell they’re calling themselves. And I saw her myself.”
“Anna Prescott.”
“Yes.”
Falconi nodded. “Did she identify herself?”
“…No.”
“Did she try to come to you? Make a scene? Ask to be rescued?”
“No. But she was…” I pointed to the rooster. “She was watching the little boy who was chasing the bird.”
“And this particular barnyard animal was more important to her than the opportunity to escape her kidnapper after fifteen years of captivity?”
They didn’t have any idea what fifteen minutes of captivity could do to an innocent girl.
“She might have been scared.” I said. “Coerced. Under threat to not speak a word. Hell, there were so many kids around. Maybe she was worried about them.”
“Maybe it wasn’t Anna Prescott?” Falconi said. “You don’t have a recent picture of her. How can you be sure?”
“Because her sister came in a few days ago and told me about the kidnapping. Then some lunatic shoots a bullet through her living room window and burns her damned house down.”
Falconi whistled. “That’ll do it.”
“Louisa Prescott gave me the leads that implicated the Goodman’s farm with the murder-suicide we were working.” I took a breath. “That’s why I need your help.”
Falconi and Riley had worked together long enough to finish each other’s sentences. Fortunately, I spoke before either of them said something the other would regret.
“Something shady is happening at that farm,” I said. “I saw it.”
“Then why do you need our help?” Falconi asked.
I didn’t answer. Not directly. “They say they’re a religious charity—a women and children’s shelter for homeless and runaway kids. But there’s a lot of kids there, all working the farm.”
Falconi sipped his coffee. “Are they in school?”
“I was there mid-day on a Monday. Didn’t see any school buses.”
Riley shrugged. “Homeschooling’s not a crime.”
“No, but sexual abuse is. A lot of the girls there were pregnant. I’m talking under sixteen, most under fourteen.”
“That shit happens, McKenna. Don’t tell me you haven’t run into those sorts of cases in your workload.”
“There’s too many of them.”
Falconi scratched his beard. “But they’re runaways. They probably got into trouble on the street or with whoever took them in. What if they went to the charity shelter for help?”
Any other charity, any other place, and I’d have sided with a devil’s advocate.
But this farm had too much of the devil in it already.
“Where did you talk to Jacob Goodman?” I asked. “To tell him about Jonah?”
Riley jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “He came here. Talked to us in the station, viewed the body in the morgue to ID what was left of it.”
“Then you didn’t see this place…or the girls and women on it.”
Falconi laughed. “London, you see zombie hillbillies in Point State Park. Lump three trees together, and you think it’s Deliverance.”
“Not this time. This farm is old-school—stone-age. They take some hardcore positions from the Bible. Like the passages that say women and children should be seen and not heard? They don’t talk. They don’t meet your gaze. They obey the men—go here, head back inside, get into the van. They make no decisions for themselves.”
Falconi sighed. “Again. Not a crime.”
Riley elbowed his partner. “Might be a blessing.”
“Like any woman is gonna put up with your bullshit,” Falconi said. “You’d tell her to get in the kitchen, she’d head straight to the knife block to chop off your—”
“They’re a cult,” I said.
They collectively groaned before attempting to escape my department. I blocked their path with outstretched arms and a raised eyebrow.
“They’re isolated on a private plot of land. Multiple families live on the single compound. They’re completely self-sufficient, living off the land with their own sources of power and water and the farm for food. They’re religiously motivated and extraordinarily fundamentalist in their views.”
“Enough screwing around,” Falconi said. “What exactly do you think is happening there?”
Voicing it would make it true. I hesitated only a moment.
“I think the Goodmans are holding the girls captive on the farm.”
“Abusing them?”
I swallowed, but poison would have tasted better than this filth. “Raping them.”
“Did you see it happening?”
“No.”
“Anna looks pretty happy in this picture.”
“Simon Goodman said they were planning a wedding,” I said. “Nina Martin was married to Jonah Goodman.”
Riley frowned. “What do you think?”
“I think you need to ask your commanding officer what he thinks.” Sergeant Adamski’s voice boomed over the unit. “And I think we’ve already got a harassment call on this.”
I turned to face my superior, but he took one look at the picture on the whiteboard, grimaced, and shimmied his pants up past comfortable to where he felt it made an effective statement against my investigation.
“London, what the hell are you doing? I just got off the phone with Lieutenant Clark. Apparently, he’s been on the phone with a Matthew Goodman this morning.”
That rat bastard went through on his threat? “He wouldn’t dare.”
“I walked into a goddamned mine field this morning, taking it on the chin for you. The lieutenant wants to fry your ass for harassing the lawyer you attempted to intimidate yesterday—without a warrant, probable cause, or even any reasonable suspicion.”
My jaw clenched so hard it popped. “I didn’t intimidate anyone. I needed them to answer questions for a case.”
“Did they invite you to the farm?”
“I found their address.”
Adamski snorted. “You followed them into a funeral, verbally insulted the children attending the services, and tracked their address via plates you ran in the parking lot—”
“Which matched the partial plate Louisa Prescott gave me.”
“A partial. That’s not enough for a DA, and you know it. What are you trying to do?”
“I’m finding Nina Martin’s baby.”
“And harassing a grieving family, reeling from their death of their murderer son, was the way you decided to find her?”
Oh, this was ridiculous. I faced my sergeant with as much professionalism and confidence as I could offer without appearing to be whiny, petulant, or—a death knell to my career—a complete bitch.
I was right.
&nbs
p; I knew it.
I felt it.
And if I had to convince everyone in the damn station, I’d pull up the chairs, pop the popcorn, and preach the sermon until my lungs gave out.
“I didn’t harass anyone,” I said. “I asked if they knew the deceased. Six girls attended their little service, but the only time they opened their mouths was to recite the Lord’s Prayer.
“Because you terrified them.” Adamski groaned.
“No.” My voice sharpened. “Because Simon Goodman scared them. He intimidated them into silence. But they knew what happened to Nina and Jonah, and they know where that baby is.”
The department wasn’t big enough for a disagreement to go unnoticed. The Missing Persons Unit turned into a slick sideshow punctuated with a blurry picture of a rooster. My fellow officers dropped their calls and put off their investigations for another few minutes, hunched over their desks, ears strained in our direction.
Didn’t matter to me. The more people aware of the problem, the more opportunity we had to save those girls from the Goodman’s perversions.
Adamski sighed. “Why didn’t they give any information about the child?”
“I’m not sure. I want to talk to them again.”
“Why?”
It sounded less insane in my head. “I think they’re hiding the baby.”
“Did you see a child there?”
My laugh turned cold. “I saw a lot of children there. Too many, and every one of them in trouble. Know what else I saw? A red pick-up truck, stained with mud, that looked identical to a truck I watched pull away from Jonah and Cora’s murder scene. There’s coincidences, and then there’s reasonable suspicion. Let me investigate this. Something isn’t right.”
Adamski huffed, shoving his hands in his pockets. He jingled his keys so hard he must have bent them over his fingers. He nodded to Riley.
“You talked with the Goodmans?” he asked.
Riley nodded. “Yes, sir. I spoke with Jacob Goodman a few days ago. Informed him of what had happened with his son.”
“Did you get a read on him?”
Falconi was more of a people-person. He fielded the question. “Cold. Thought it was strange because it was his youngest son, but he said Jonah was estranged from the family. Had been for months. It seemed like…they expected something like this. But he seemed to be a decent man. Religious, but that’s never hurt anyone.”
“Except Anna Prescott,” I said. Adamski arched his eyebrows at me. I didn’t let him interrupt. “Don’t tell me that’s not her. I know it. Hell, her sister, Louisa knows it. And now they’re doing everything they can to silence her.”
“Can you prove that Goodmans set fire to her house?” Adamski asked.
“Someone tried to scare her, and they did a damn good job of it.” I held my hand up, still wrapped in an awkward bandage. “If I hadn’t gotten there when I did, she’d have died.”
“That doesn’t mean it was the Goodmans. What other leads do you have on the fire?”
I hated my answer. “Forensics is still investigating the shell casings they found at the scene. The fire marshal hasn’t made his report yet.”
“Prescott lives in Braddock, right?”
“Yes.”
“Not a great neighborhood.”
“Oh, come on.” I tapped the whiteboard with my bad hand. “This wasn’t some teenaged prank. This was retaliation. They’re trying to scare Louisa. And she should be scared. We all should be scared. Those girls were kidnapped, and they’re being kept on that farm.”
They stilled. Glanced at each other. Looked to the board.
Then their gazes focused on me.
And I knew what they were going to say before the words passed over their lips.
It was the same excuse, the same worry, the same damn condescending accusation they’d tossed around in whispers in the hall, when checking my case load, and any time I faced a dangerous perp.
“This isn’t the same.” They didn’t believe me. “It’s not the same!”
Adamski gentled his voice. “London, you have great instincts—”
“You should listen to them.”
“And you should take a step back from this. Get some objectivity.”
“Why?”
“I think you’re…” he paused. “What’s that shrink word for it?”
I answered for him. “Projecting.”
“That’s it.”
“I’m not.”
Adamski groaned. “You found yourself in an isolated location where you thought young girls were being held in captivity. London, any person who has been through what you’ve been through will assume the worst in any given situation—”
“Go to the farm. See the girls there. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re sensitive to these sorts of cases,” he said. I didn’t need that superficial kindness. I’d heard that tone for years. It never made what I went through any easier. “You are the epitome of a victim’s advocate, London. You have a unique perspective on these sorts of things, and you’ve worked tirelessly to protect women and children and families from dangerous situations, but—”
“This has nothing to do with my past, Sergeant.” My skin prickled, marching over the scars left by his knife. “I get it. It changed me. But my kidnapping is irrelevant here. That family is capturing young children to rape them. They’re not…”
Disfiguring them.
Torturing them.
Slicing them apart bite-by-bite for his own perverted and cannibalistic ritual.
“I’m talking child abuse, not a serial killer,” I said.
They didn’t meet my gaze. This was the conversation no one wanted to have. No one knew what to say, what to ask, or how to face the one woman who managed to escape one of the deadliest serial killers in the country.
One still at large.
Hiding.
Waiting.
“We need to help those children,” I said.
Adamski frowned until his lips thinned and disappeared into his prickling chin. He nodded one too many times at the ground before speaking.
This conversation wouldn’t go in my favor.
“London, we’ve been down this path before.”
Son of a… “Oh, come on.”
“Last year, you had the same gut feeling.”
“Bruce—”
“Accused that man of raping his daughter and her friends.”
Yeah, but that particular runaway had the bruises, petty criminal history, and attitude to match a proper victim. “She exhibited the signs. There was evidence—”
“He was innocent. You were the one who pushed. You had a hunch. You were convinced—”
How many times did I have to say it? “This isn’t the same.”
“It better not be, London. You nearly lost your badge. This department is still wrapped up in the lawsuit. Nothing you found then supported your hunch.”
I couldn’t let them walk away. I had to make them see. Not for me. Not to make sure I was right. I had to protect them. “The girls are in trouble. They need help.”
He paused, long and deliberate. His profanity broke first. I suppressed a grin.
“Then you bring me proof,” he said. “And do it without harassing that family. If you can’t find me anything in two days, this is over. Got it? There’s enough crime and misfortune in this city. Don’t go chasing after imaginary evils.”
“This evil isn’t imagined,” I said. “But I guarantee. In two days? You’ll wish it was.”
I didn’t care what it took. I was going to rescue those girls.
Before any more innocence was lost.
12
You can’t stop me with brute force.
Think, London. It’s the only way you’ll survive.
-Him
Crime didn’t pay, but it put a hell of a markup on the goods it produced.
The Abbott’s Antiques storefront was a Pittsburgh staple, proudly owned and operated in the Strip District for the pas
t fifty years. The store served the city and its residents with antiques, new pieces, and, famously, hand-crafted artisan furniture.
Most of which came from the Goodman farm.
I poked through the cluttered aisles, studying the furniture. It was an artist’s work. He’d taken the time to craft the chairs to rock without creaking. The dining room tables were decorated with an elegant flower pattern inlay. The dressers were heavy, but sturdy. The chairs balanced and simple. Even the bed frames claimed an antique look ornamented with modern carvings. Perfect craftsmanship. Infinite care.
The Goodmans had talent, but they also kept secrets. And I’d learn them all.
Starting with Jonah.
“Detective.”
Clark Abbott silenced the tinkling bell on his old-fashioned register. It was for show. He rang up all his purchases on an iPad with a credit card swiper, but that didn’t suit the store’s aesthetics. The merchandise wasn’t outdated—it was antique. The scuffed floors weren’t dirty, but rustic. And the cramped aisles? Just bursting with new wares. Expensive wares. Crowded, dusty, and haphazardly tossed onto a shelf.
Apparently, Clark hadn’t found anyone to help him manage the store since Cora’s death.
“I take it you’re not here as a customer?” In a slow, tired motion, he swept his glasses off his face, rubbed his dark-circled eyes, and sighed.
“If I was, would you recommend anything for me?”
His eyebrows rose, thick and dark. He pointed over an aisle of glass vases and stacked picture frames. The wooden box looked as if it had gone untouched for years, though someone had lovingly etched the carvings into the front.
“A hope chest.” He gave me a once over and noted my bare ring finger. “Getting to be that age, Detective.”
“Looks like a fancy cat bed to me.”
“I have some knit socks in the back for those cold feet of yours.”
James had been rubbing them for a year with no luck of warming them up. “I have a little time left before I need to worry about that.”
“Cora thought so too…” Clark choked on the words and turned away. He busied himself with an antique scale and rod-iron sculpture in desperate need of a dusting. “Detective, I can’t talk about her—it—anymore. I’m sorry.”
“I know it’s painful. I can’t imagine how it feels.”