He had known Chief Wilson for years and had even considered him a role model and mentor.
Crouching in the underbrush near the gray sedan, he whispered into his two way radio to the officers at the bottom of the canyon. He wanted to give them as many details as possible before he tried to follow the suspect and the little girl.
“I see the girl. The perpetrator must have had her hidden when he passed the stop point. I’m watching him right now.
He just pulled her out of the trunk and untied her. So far he hasn’t tried to hurt the child, but if he does, I’ll do what I can to stop him.” He just shook his head. Silencing his radio, he followed Wilson and the little girl as they walked down to the lake.
It seemed as though they were having a conversation, but he was too far behind them to catch any of the words. The child seemed to be growing less fearful, so he felt confident that the kidnapper wouldn’t hurt her for a little while. However, he knew from the reports that Ashlyn Anderson had trusted the individual who had taken her and hadn’t seemed to be in danger until she was near the lake.
However, he remembered seeing the profile of the suspect in the Ashlyn Anderson case. The document stated that the perpetrator was more than likely a man in his late forties, lived alone, and calculated his every move. He enjoyed getting to know his victims before he harmed them.
Knowing who the man who took Ashlyn was now, he knew that he wouldn’t spend a lot of time trying to get to know her. He needed to get back to avoid suspicion. So, he must have used the drive up the canyon to talk to her.
He hid himself in the trees as he watched Wilson talk to the little girl. He really hoped that his backup would arrive soon because he didn’t know what to do if the situation got violent before they did. Wilson was an officer like himself. Could he shoot him? What would he do to the child if he discovered he was being watched?
With so many questions flooding his mind, he tried to remember the pictures of the crime scene where Ashlyn had been found. Knowing that this man could do something like that made it easier to put up his resolve and do whatever it took to save the next innocent victim. When the deputies got the call at the bottom of the canyon, they were shocked. Every vehicle they had seen didn’t arouse any suspicions. How did Andy know to follow that one? His instincts might have saved a little girl’s life. The remaining officers got into their cruisers and began to make their way up the canyon. The drive would take awhile because of the lingering effects of the weather and the winding roads that led up to the lakes. They called the authorities closer to the scene, but they knew that if they didn’t arrive soon, their colleague would have to handle a nasty situation on his own. Everyone’s nerves were on edge as they made their way up the canyon as quickly as possible.
Wilson continued to talk to little Lily. He felt that he was getting to know her well. The excitement of what he knew would come was building within him. He would soon have another friend to add to his collection.
“Can we go home now? I will be your friend, but I really need to see my family,” Lily told him as seriously as she could. Her brown hair was tangled around her face, and her green eyes focused on him with the intensity of a person twice her age.
“In a little bit. I brought some candy. Would you like a piece?” She nodded and he gave her a few pieces of licorice. As she chewed on the candy, he knew that his next move would need to happen soon. She was getting fidgety.
“I’m scared Wilson. A little girl was killed by a mean man up here. I don’t like this place. Could we go someplace else?” Lily gazed over at him.
He could tell that she knew. She knew that he was bringing her to the same place he had brought Ashlyn.
“I just want all of my friends to be together. Ashlyn liked it here too. Would you like to go and see her?” he smiled at her. It was an evil smile.
“No! I want to go home! Please don’t hurt me!” Lily began to sob as she realized just what was going to happen to her.
He had hoped to avoid this moment a little longer. However, if she was going to struggle, he needed to get it over with. Quickly he grabbed her wrist and pulled her to him. As she struggled, he dragged her back toward his car. He needed to grab his bag of goodies.
“No! Please! I’m a good girl!” she sobbed as he tied her up again.
“Yes, you are a good girl. That’s why I have chosen you,” he said as he pulled out the rope he would use to strangle her. “That’s why you are my friend.”
Lily sobbed. Even though it didn’t look like there were any other people around, she decided to scream, hoping that someone would hear her and save her.
“Shut up!” he hissed as he kicked her in the shin. She fell to the ground and tried to scream again as he began to kick her around on the ground.
The rush was mounting as he heard the one word he hadn’t expected come from behind him.
“FREEZE!” a male voice shouted.
He turned around and saw the young officer he had encountered at the mouth of the canyon holding a gun pointed at him.
“Well, well. It seems that you have caught me. However, if you expect this to be easy, you’re wrong!” Wilson shouted as he pulled his side arm out of the holster on his waist. He never went without it.
“Put the gun down, Wilson. We both know that this is over.”
“Not until I get what I want!” Wilson yelled back. He pointed the gun at the writhing child on the ground. “If you come any closer, I will shoot her. It’s not the way I planned it, but I have my reputation to uphold. Then I will dispose of you too.”
“You don’t have a chance, Wilson. Your time is done.”
“That’s what you think!” Wilson grabbed the struggling girl off the ground and began to run. He hurriedly fired a shot at the officer who was pursuing him.
The undergrowth was still soaked from the rain of the night before. Wilson slipped and fell a few times as he headed up to the clearing where he had met his first friend.
The officer behind him gave chase, but he didn’t want to fire his gun at the kidnapper for fear that he would hit the child instead. Wilson was moving too quickly through the woods to make a clean shot possible. He would have to fire as soon as he could though. That little girl’s life was in danger.
Wilson’s breathing became ragged as he struggled with the weight of the child and the speed of the chase. He couldn’t drag her like he had Ashlyn because it would slow him down too much. The years of eating poorly and drinking were taking an adverse effect on him. He wished at that point that he would have taken the pointers of his mentoring officer seriously.
The officer pursuing him moved as quickly as he could. However, he didn’t have good shoes on for the conditions and slipped and fell multiple times as he pursued the predator. He just hoped and prayed that he could help this child before it was too late.
Meanwhile down the Canyon
The other officers made their way up the muddy road that led to where the scene was unfolding. They just hoped that they would be able to stop the mad man from taking that little girl’s life. The cars slipped and slid in the mud as they tried to make their way as quickly as possible. They could see that a couple of other vehicles had recently been this direction, and they took it as a good sign that they were going the right way.
The other cruiser came into view. It appeared to be abandoned. Andy had followed the perpetrator. Where had they gone?
As they got out of their own cruisers, they noticed the other vehicle. The gray sedan stood with its trunk open and a length of rope lying on the ground. The officers pulled their guns and canvassed the scene. Whoever had been with the vehicle had fled. They could see a beaten path where someone had hurriedly run up the hill a few yards away. Fear welled up within each of them as they realized that there was a chase in progress. What would they find up that hill? They followed the trampled undergrowth as quickly as they could. The wetness made them slide and fall, but they quickly jumped up and continued. They couldn’t see or hear anything ah
ead of them, so they continued to follow the path before them. Whoever had come through here had been here recently.
As they neared a clearing, they heard shouts. They paused for a moment and the three officers pulled out their guns and quietly made their way toward where the voices were coming from.
“I told you! She is mine and you are not going to get out of here alive! I have my reputation to protect and I’m not going to let some little wannabe take that away! I have worked too hard to get to where I am to let you ruin it!” they heard the first voice shout.
“This is over, Wilson! Just because you’re in a position of power doesn’t mean that you can kill innocent children. We are called to serve and protect. You are not protecting her!” Andy shouted back.
“I’m protecting her from a harsh future! You have no idea the neglect and poverty that these children deal with. I’m making sure that they will remain forever children in a happy world. They are my collection of friends!” Wilson shouted back.
“Chief Wilson, I really think that you’re not thinking rationally. You need to think about what you’re doing. Killing these children is not protecting them. You are causing pain, suffering and fear for the people you serve. Please, think this through. I can make this easier on you if you will just put down your gun now.” Andy was trying hard to talk some sense into Wilson, but it was obvious to the other officers that the chief wasn’t in his right mind.
“Just because you think that what I’m doing is wrong doesn’t make it that way. I’m saving her life!” Wilson was so sure of what he was doing.
The officers maintained their hiding place near the edge of the clearing. They could see the two men standing in the center, Wilson holding his gun to the little girl’s head, and Andy with his gun pointed at Wilson. Andy had no way of getting a clear shot without hurting the child that Wilson had tied up in front of him.
“James, why don’t you try to go around to the side and get a clear shot of him.
We need to take him down so that he doesn’t hurt either the child or Andy,” the head officer told the young man next to him. James nodded and made his way around the clearing as quickly and quietly as he possibly could.
“Wilson, please give this up. You aren’t accomplishing anything by holding this child and killing her. How is this going to make it better?” Andy shouted back at the man holding the little girl hostage.
“I’m never giving up,” Wilson growled.
The little girl in his arms began to struggle and whimper again. She was terrified, and the officers wanted to make that fear go away.
“Shut up, you little brat!” Wilson hissed at her.
“Wilson, she’s scared. Please, let her go.”
Wilson let out an evil laugh that made the officers blood run cold. No one had any idea that this man would be capable of doing such a thing.
“I want my mommy! Please, Wilson, take me home! I won’t tell no one!” Lily cried.
“I told you to shut up!” Wilson shouted as he drove his knee into her back. She screamed as she fell to the ground. The echo of the shot both stunned and angered Wilson. He hadn’t realized that there were other officers in the area. After the shot hit him in the shoulder, he fired his gun quickly at Andy. Andy fell to the ground.
The world seemed to stand still around them. Another shot was fired and Wilson slumped to the ground.
Lily started screaming at the top of her lungs. She had no idea what was going on around her. She just saw two men lying on the ground near her.
One of the officers rushed into the clearing and picked up Lily. He cut the rope away from her and carried her down the hill as quickly as he could. She needed medical attention. The other two officers ran to check on Andy and Wilson.
In just a few seconds, it was determined that Wilson was dead. Andy had a bullet wound to his lower abdomen, but he was still conscious and breathing. The officers radioed for an ambulance and a team to investigate the scene. In just a few hours, a normal day turned into a scene from a crime show.
The area was once again roped off for investigation. However, the pieces of a crime that had shocked the nation were beginning to come together.
Wilson had been mentally ill for years, but his illness had just begun to manifest into violence.
Looking back at the profile of the suspect in the Ashlyn Anderson murder, he fit all the criteria. He was in a position of power, he lived alone, and he had fantasies of making the world a better place based upon his behavior.
After the scene was clear, his home, car and office were all searched. They found Ashlyn’s hair barrette sitting on the end table next to his recliner. There were articles in his bedroom about child abductions. And the most incriminating of all, the rope that had been left on the ground next to his car was the one that had strangled Ashlyn. Lily turned out to be okay. She had bruising from where Wilson had kicked her repeatedly and rope burns on her wrists, but she showed no other injuries. However, the trauma that her ordeal caused would take years for her to get past.
Her mother and brother rushed to the hospital as soon as they heard that she had been found. Tears ran down her mother’s cheeks as she wrapped her arms around her daughter. She had feared that she would never see her daughter again. As she held her daughter, she vowed to keep her safe for the rest of her life.
Andy had extensive internal damage from the gunshot, but they expected him to make a full recovery. Everyone in the area called him a hero for his role in saving the little girl. He used his instincts and followed the killer up the canyon and caught him before he could kill her.
The communities of Wellington and Fort Collins still were scared and shocked by the whole ordeal. An officer of the law had committed such outrageous crimes. It just left everyone baffled and confused. If their officers were like that, who could they trust to protect them?
The faded trust in the law enforcement community made life in the area difficult. The state ordered mental evaluations for all the officers in the state and the state government passed a law that every new officer must undergo extensive medical evaluations prior to working in the field.
Even though there had been mandates for such policies in the past, they weren’t seriously exercised until Chief Armin Wilson abducted and killed a little girl and attempted to do the same to another.
Martha Anderson was both shocked and relieved when Ashlyn’s killer was revealed. She understood why he had been so nonchalant about the case to begin with and that sickened her. She still wondered, however, how Ashlyn would have known him and trusted him enough to voluntarily get into his vehicle and go to the mountains with him.
The investigation had revealed that he had written down the account of his murder of Ashlyn. From what they could see, her daughter had been cooperative until she knew that something was terribly wrong and was killed when she tried to struggle.
Martha had no idea that she had even known who Chief Wilson was.
Mrs. Miller, Ashlyn’s teacher at the time of her disappearance, was able to fill in that piece of the puzzle. Just weeks before Ashlyn was abducted, there had been a school assembly about the benefits of the law enforcement.
The officers had all come and introduced themselves and had had the opportunity to speak with the children. Mrs. Miller stated that Chief Wilson had taken a special interest in Ashlyn and talked to her more than he did any of the other children.
Even as the pieces came together, Martha still felt unsettled. She and Sarah had decided to remain in the little town despite all that had happened. She couldn’t imagine going anywhere else. She missed Ashlyn terribly.
AFTERWORD
Dear Reader,
I want to thank you for reading this story. As I was writing it, I thought about the extreme reverence that we place in law enforcement. The men and women who protect and serve us are held on a pedestal in our community. However, I have seen reports of domestic violence and abuse that no one believes happen because of the line of work that these individuals part
icipate in.
Faded Trust is purely a work of fiction. However, I wanted to delve into the issue of reverence for the law enforcement community. It seems as though most of these individuals are above suspicion. Chief Wilson was actively involved in the investigation of the murder he had committed. Even though he was mentally ill, no one thought to look at him because of his position in the community.
Even though there are significant mental evaluations in place for such civil servants, they seem to overlook many of the dangers in personality. As time goes on, the testing process for law enforcement individuals is becoming more refined, and the hope is that someday the ones we trust to serve and protect us will be upstanding citizens themselves
THRILLS VOL 1
Thrills: Vol.2 Page 21