Tori turned and left the hospital room, dabbing away tears as she walked briskly down the hallway, quickly down the stairs and then burst out the front door of the hospital, only to run into Cal who was climbing the steps on his way inside.
“Leaving?”
Tori nodded as she tried to look away.
Cal nodded and then hooked his left arm out. “Come on. I’ll walk you to your car.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Tori slipped her arm through his and the two of them slowly and silently walked out to the parking lot. When they reached her car Cal asked, “Will I ever get to see you again?”
“I don’t know, Cal. This place…”
“Is home,” he replied in his best fatherly voice. “You only truly have one place in your life that is home. Warts and all, life and death, Manchester is it for you. Remember that.”
CHAPTER 35
“I NEED YOUR HELP.”
Two weeks later.
“Which room is it?” Tori asked, examining the two-story motor lodge through binoculars.
“The manager says it’s number nineteen, so third one in from the left on the second level.”
Tori and her team were on the search for Siena Monroe, the fifteen-year-old daughter of New York State Senate Majority Leader Daphne Monroe. Siena had been missing for three days. Tori and her team were called into the case in Mamaroneck, north of New York City. The local police’s initial concern was that Siena was abducted. Siena told her mother she was going over to a coffee shop to meet up with a friend named Jamie. Daphne asked her daughter about Jamie, as she’d never met or even heard of a friend by that name. Siena said Jamie was a new friend from school. Since her daughter had a limited social life, a new friend to hang out with from school was deemed a promising development and she inquired no further.
Daphne, as majority leader, was running for re-election. Her own district was secure, but she was traveling around New York state, campaigning on behalf of other candidates, collecting chits for when she made her move to run for the United States Senate in two years. When she returned home late in the evening, she was alarmed to find that Siena was not home and was not answering her phone. When Daphne attempted to find her phone using the find My iPhone app, Siena’s phone was in White Plains, a half-hour away. Siena’s phone was later found in the bottom of a garbage can. That’s when the alert went out and a call was made to the FBI and Tori and her team were immediately brought in.
Siena’s mother described her daughter to Tori as not having a lot of self-confidence. “She’s an extremely self-conscious teenager, gangly and maybe a little awkward, whose body is going through all kinds of changes.”
While the police tracked down Siena’s movements from the time she left home, Tori and her team interviewed two girls named Anna and Madi, Siena’s two close friends. “The only Jamie I remember is one I saw on ChitChat. It was in a chat room,” Anna said.
“Yeah, I think I chatted with…” Madi paused for a second. “You know, I guess I’m not sure if Jamie was a girl or a guy. I kind of thought a guy.”
“Definitely a guy,” Anna stated. “Jamie asked for a picture. Definitely a guy.”
“Did you send a photo?”
“No. I never respond to those requests, at least not from people I don’t know.”
“How about you?” Tori asked Madi.
“No, it never got that far with me.”
“What about Siena?”
“I know she was on the chat string. Whether they went one-on-one and discussed that, I don’t know,” Anna stated.
Tori and her team dug into Siena’s computer and cell phone records, focusing in on her ChitChat activity and found the discussion chains with Jamie and Tori agreed with Anna. Jamie was a man. As Tori observed Siena’s discussions over the past few weeks, she started to discern a pattern.
“Do you see it?” Tori asked Geno Harlow.
“Oh yeah, he’s totally grooming her.”
They both sat down with Daphne Monroe.
“This Jamie was bunny hunting her,” Tori explained, showing what they’d found to Daphne Monroe.
“What’s bunny hunting?”
“It’s the process whereby an online predator, which is what we think this Jamie is, picks a potential victim and then grooms them. Your daughter is online a great deal, correct?”
“I think so,” Monroe replied sheepishly. “She’s in her room alone a lot. I assume she’s on her computer. What you’re telling me is that she was talking online to this Jamie.”
“Yes. What happens is the predator goes through social media posts and public chat rooms and so forth to learn about a potential target. Your daughter profiles as being somewhat lonely or certainly wishes she had more of a social life.”
Monroe nodded. “That’s probably accurate.”
Harlow opened his laptop and turned it around so Monroe could see it.
“Once the predator selects their target, they start grooming, first by reaching out to the target’s other friends and contacts. See here, Jamie starts by conversing with Anna and Madi and then Siena gets in on it a little bit later.”
Tori maneuvered the mouse. “See this chat string here, the conversations of Jamie start with Anna, then Madi and Siena join in. Four days later, Anna and Madi start dropping off from the conversation chain, and its just Jamie and Siena and then they move into a private chat room. And then I see it right here,” Tori pointed to the screen. “On this little conversation chain, there is a conversation that moves to text, as Siena sends Jamie her number, but you’ll notice he says I’ll text you. He didn’t type his number in the chat room.”
Tori reached for her own laptop and flipped it open and clicked a file that had copies of Siena’s texts. “On your daughter’s phone, her text history shows a series of them with someone named J, who we think is this Jamie. The number your daughter is texting to? It’s a burner phone with texting capability. Then what happens yesterday morning? They talk on the phone for a few minutes and then that’s it. She leaves the house and I think she goes to meet Jamie and now it’s all quiet.”
“Can you trace his phone?” Daphne asked, now frantic.
“We’re working on it,” Tori answered.
Unsaid to Daphne Monroe was that the pattern reminded them of two other missing girls in the last year. In both instances, the girls had not been found.
Jamie dumped the burner phone, but he’d made the mistake of leaving it turned on, which allowed them to trace it to a different area of White Plains. With the actual phone, they were able to backtrack to its purchase from a convenience store in Hamilton, New York. The sale was made on June 14, at 9:47 a.m. At the store, two FBI agents were able to access the surveillance history of the camera covering the cash register. A man in his mid-twenties purchased the phone with cash, but a lot of cash, with only a small amount of change received in return because he’d also purchased fuel. There were two exterior surveillance cameras for the convenience store. The agents were able to track the man to a white 2007 Nissan Pathfinder with the spare tire in a rack on the back. The spare tire was covered in a tarp that looked like a target and they were able to get the plate. The vehicle was registered to James Ernley of Erie, Pennsylvania.
With a bulletin out for the Pathfinder, it took twenty-four hours for the call to come in from the police in Sarasota Springs, New York. A convenience store clerk had seen the Pathfinder, remembering the target cover on the spare tire. The clerk reported the man purchased sodas and sandwiches. “Agent Hunter, there was nobody else in the truck, but the clerk says the man bought multiple sandwiches and sodas. He could be holed up somewhere around here.”
With the call, Tori and her team made a beeline up to Sarasota Springs, a town a half-hour north of Albany and three hours north from Mamaroneck. As they’d pulled into town, the Pathfinder was spotted in a local motel parking lot. The FBI, Sarasota Springs police and county sheriff’s department moved into position.
Tori raised the radio to he
r mouth. “Sheriff, are you ready to move in?”
“I’ve got three units ready,” the radio burped. “Just say the word.”
“Go,” Tori ordered.
The sheriff and two more units pulled into the parking lot, followed by Tori and her team in two black Suburbans. Two deputies ran up the steps to the second floor two steps at a time. A third followed with a battering ram. The officer swung the ram back and then through, blasting the door open. The deputies poured inside. Delaying two seconds, Tori and two of her agents came into the room, weapons drawn. The deputies already had Ernley on the floor, securing him. A deputy caught Tori’s eyes and nodded toward the bathroom.
Tori stepped over Ernley and gently opened the door for the bathroom. Holstering her gun, she walked inside to find a very scared Siena Monroe cowering in the bathtub, her hands and feet bound, with a handkerchief gag stuffed in her mouth and tied around her head.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” Tori said as she kneeled and loosened the gag, letting it fall around the girl’s neck. “Are you Siena Monroe?”
The girl nodded.
“I’m an FBI agent, you’re safe now,” Tori said, holding up her identification for Siena to see. “Let’s get you home.”
The return home of Siena Monroe was big news in New York. James Ernley immediately became the primary suspect in two other disappearances. That investigation was being led by the New York Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Perhaps Ernley’s capture would lead to closure for two more families.
Back in her office, Tori fielded a congratulatory phone call from the governor of New York. At home that night, she received calls from the two United States senators for New York as well as the Director of the FBI.
It was the biggest case of her career. She should have been celebrating and an open bottle of fine Chardonnay sat on the weathered trunk in front of her with a half-full glass next to it. Yet, she could barely convince herself to even lean forward to reach for the glass.
She gazed around her condo, a unit she’d lived in for five years, a home she’d not bothered to make look like a home. Long-neglected, unpacked but deteriorating cardboard boxes were still lying about. For years she’d had Jessie’s disappearance as an excuse in moments like this. She would tell herself the reason she wasn’t married, didn’t have a relationship, a family or even a semblance of an active social life was because of the job. It was her job to make sure nobody experienced what she had when she was seventeen years old. And that always seemed to be enough to get her through until the next new case came along.
She didn’t have that anymore.
Jessie’s case was solved. She knew what happened. All the questions had been answered. She had closure.
Now, all she had was work.
Tori pushed herself up from the couch, picked up her wine glass and took a long sip as she walked to the kitchen. On the counter she found her phone plugged in and charging. She picked it up and swiped left on the screen to the photo icon, which she tapped. With her left thumb she clicked on the small picture to open it up. It was the familiar picture, the one of her and Braddock at the supper club in Crosslake, his arm around her, the two of them smiling like a happy couple.
Tori shook her head. Married couples had tons of these photos on their phones. Her friends all had numerous photos on their phones that they would show her of their husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, kids at dinner or parties or on vacation. Tori had no such photos, other than the one of her and Braddock. If she bothered to open the boxes in the condo, she wouldn’t find any other photos like that. The one with Braddock was the only one she had, and she found herself frequently cherishing it.
She closed the photo and then pressed the green phone icon, scrolled quickly into the Bs for Braddock’s name and let her thumb hover over his number, so tempted to tap it and call him to just hear his voice. She’d conducted this exercise more than once in the weeks since she returned to New York. She’d look at the photo, clicking to the phone number and then stop, telling herself it could never possibly work. Living in Manchester would be impossible. How could she live there with all that had happened? How could she ignore all that?
And sure, she was thinking about him a lot, but what if things didn’t work out? What did they really know about each other? And Braddock had a son, how would that work? She found missing kids for a living, understood children and teen behavior in the context of her job but what did she know about relating on a day-to-day basis with kids? She’d never done it. No nieces, no nephews. Heck, she’d never even babysat in her life.
And what happened between them, what made that so special? Was it Braddock? Or was it the idea of someone like him? They were working under intense circumstances and ended up in bed with each other. It helped them both get through a difficult time, but they couldn’t make anything out of that which would last.
Or could they?
Or the question really was, could she? That was the question she kept coming back to. Could she do it?
“Not if you’re such a mental basket case, Tori,” she muttered out loud, taking another drink of wine, shaking her head as she thought about something else Braddock had said to her once. “Come on Tori, live a little.”
She looked around her undecorated, empty, lifeless and emotionless condo. She thought about the fact that on the night that was the pinnacle of her career with the FBI, she was alone with nothing but an expensive bottle of Chardonnay and a cell phone photo she wistfully kept coming back to.
There was nothing else.
Tori closed her eyes, exhaled and out loud told herself a hard truth. “This isn’t enough anymore.” But if she wanted more, she had to make some changes. It was time to test something else Braddock said. “Anything that’s broke can be fixed.”
Tori looked back down to her phone and tapped into the directory. She scrolled to the Rs and found the number she was looking for. Chelsea, now Dr. Chelsea Reid, psychologist, her college roommate. She clicked on her number and Chelsea picked up on the third ring.
“I need your help.”
CHAPTER 36
“I WANTED SOMETHING BETTER.”
Friday, October 19th
I t was a gorgeous Minnesota Indian summer day for mid-October, the temperature a balmy sixty-eight degrees, the fall colors in full bloom. Tori smiled as she pulled up to Braddock’s house to find a new shiny black dual cab Chevy Silverado parked in the newly paved driveway. The repainted back of the house no longer showed any remnants of the burn marks. The driveway was bright and new. All evidence of the truck explosion was gone. She parked her own Audi Q5 behind the new truck.
As she got out of the Audi, Quinn came bounding out the back door of the house and stopped. He’d seemingly grown another two or three inches since she’d seen him back in the summer. He would be tall and angular, just like his father. She slid her sunglasses up on top of her head and smiled. “Hi, Quinn. Do you remember me?”
“You’re Tori, right? Tori Hunter.”
“That’s right,” she replied, walking over to him. “How are you?”
“I’m good.” Quinn’s face was painted in navy blue and sky-blue stripes, the Manchester Lakers colors. He also had a navy-blue football jersey on over a sky-blue hoodie.
“Nice face paint. Where you off to all done up like that?”
“I’m going over to my cousins’. We’re going to the football game tonight. It’s the big game.”
“Ah, would that still be Alexandria? The mighty Cardinals?”
“That’s right. How do you know that?”
“Hey, I’m a proud Laker grad. I went to that game every year when I was growing up,” Tori replied. “Is Alex good this year?”
“Yeah, but the Lakers are unbeaten so we’re going to roll. The crowd is going to be massive. We’re going to get there early and tailgate in the parking lot.”
“That sounds fun,” Tori answered with a smile and then looked to the cabin. “Is your dad around?”
“Yeah, but he�
��s out on the boat. He said he wanted to take a trip around the lake before he and Steak take it out for storage tomorrow. You can wait for him inside if you want.”
“Thanks, I think I will. You have fun tonight.”
“Thanks, I will.”
She watched as Quinn jumped excitedly onto his bike and pedaled speedily down the road without a care in the world.
Tori stepped inside the house and walked through the kitchen to the front, peering out the large picture window to the crystal blue waters of the lake. “On a day like today, why wouldn’t you take the boat out?”
She looked back to the kitchen and saw a beer bottle cap and opener sitting on the island. That’s a fine idea, she thought as she opened the refrigerator and grabbed a beer of her own. She stepped out the sliding glass door, slid on her sunglasses and leisurely made her way down to the dock and walked out to the end.
Tori sat down and relaxed on the bench, sipping from her beer, bathing in the warmth of the sun as light waves lapped gently by the dock and into the shore. The view couldn’t have been more picturesque, the brilliantly bright orange, red, yellow, brown, and rust hues of the fall leaves transposed against the cloudless light blue sky and the cool dark blue water of the lake. The air was fresh and crisp. The tranquility was interrupted only by an occasional rumbling of a distant boat or the melodic call of a loon. As she raised her beer to her lips, she thought that, yes, she could get used to this again.
Tori glanced left when the red Malibu speedboat came around the point to the northeast.
Braddock gently turned his speedboat slowly to the left, resting comfortably in the driver’s seat, his left hand casually draped over the steering wheel, taking a sip from the bottle of cold beer in his right hand, his first one since he’d been shot. His doctor probably wouldn’t yet approve, but the day was just too damn nice not to have a real beverage or two before heading to the football game.
Following the contours of the shoreline, he turned gradually to the east, enjoying one last ride around the lake for the season. He came around the point to turn into Murphy Bay and that’s when he saw her, sitting on the bench at the end of the dock.
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