STOLEN

by DAWN KOPMAN WHIDDEN

  Blakey didn’t answer right away, seemed to be lost in thought. As if he was trying to figure out what he should say.

  “Does your brother know the area?” Marty asked him.

  “No. We were going through all his stuff when my old man took off. We found some paperwork and a property title on the log cabin. Once we found those articles and some other stuff, Shane was determined to come this way and see what we could find out about those kidnappings. I remembered the old man talking about owning a piece of property here and wanting to go back one day. So, we just took a chance we would find him and get some answers at the same time. Honestly, we didn’t come here with the intention of hurting anyone.” Again, a moment of silence fell as he gathered his thoughts. “Then there was this feeling about this state being familiar . . . .”

  “What do you mean, familiar?” Marty interjected, prompting him to continue.

  “I’m not sure. The only thing I know to be a fact is when I was a kid, whenever I would see a car with New York State plates, I would get this feeling, like I belonged in that car. It was just weird. I don’t think I was ever here, in New York. In this state, that is, but I’m not sure. I just don’t know.”

  The minute Marty heard him mention the license plates, he felt the hair on his arms stand up; and the rest of the words that came out of his mouth seemed to be garbled and dissolved into the air. Marty wasn’t quite sure if he heard him right. Did he just hear this guy talk about New York State license plates? The words came out of his mouth, but bounced around before he was able to actually understand. Here was the something that he wanted to feel. His thoughts did a slow crawl, and he dug deep into his long forgotten memories, trying to remember another face. He began to mentally create a vision of a little boy sitting in the backseat of his father’s Buick, calling out state names as if he was actually reading the license plates of cars they passed on the highway. Marty tried hard to see if he could connect the two. That faded newspaper photo and this grown man lying in the hospital bed, no more than two feet right in front of him now. Was he grabbing at straws here?

  Marty stared at him, but nothing came out of his mouth. He couldn’t say anything. He tried to take in every feature, every line, the shape of his nose, the exact color of his eyes, the shape of his eyebrows, and the width of his lips. He wanted to memorize it, stamp it on his brain, so that when he walked out of the room, he would have a photograph of the man engraved in his mind.

  Marty tried desperately to dig into his memory and picture the little boy who would come knocking on his door asking if his brother, Danny, could come out and play.

  And he wondered now if he was totally off base and just imagining things.

  Marty didn’t know if he wanted to be right. Did he want this guy to be that little boy? He didn’t know who he was or what he was mixed up in. Would he finally be able to give some closure to Mrs. Kolakowski and her family who have mourned the loss of a child all these years? Would he be able to look at her grieved eyes, when she had suffered all these years for a lost little boy, but never really gave up hope? Would he finally be able to say to her the words she had longed to hear all these years, ‘we found him!’

  It wasn’t long before Jean also discovered the possible real identity of the two men. Not being in the mood to go to The Liar’s Den with Marty and the visitor from Oregon, Jean headed back to the station. She was just taking off her coat when the note Detective Frank Robinson had left on her desk caught her attention. It simply said: ‘Check your monitor.’

  It was Detective Frank Robinson, using his methodical, investigative computer skills that put it all together. He was going over the copies of files that Sanders had faxed over and comparing them to what he found on the hard drive on the laptop discovered in the pickup truck found by the cabin. The browser history on the laptop showed several searches were made of kidnappings in the area going back as far as twenty-five years ago; and a Google map was used to get directions to areas mentioned in those articles.

  Someone in Sanders’ office had compared the mug shot of Shane Blakey to one of the images and the age progression photo of Charlie Ward, a missing child from Orange County, and faxed over the photos to them. Frank left the page open on her computer and as soon as she moved her mouse, the two photographs appeared side by side.

  Jean stared at the computer monitor and then glanced back down at her notes. Her thoughts swirled around in her head.

  “Tell me who you are, Shane Blakey? I need to know who you are and what you are capable of. We know you’re armed, we know you are capable of pulling the trigger. We know you are willing and able to shoot a man down in cold blood. I need to know if you are capable of doing it again. Are you stable emotionally or are you a danger to the general public?” She spoke out loud to herself. The photograph of the white-headed, freckled-faced three-year-old toddler Charlie Ward stared back at her.

  She read the newspaper article over and over again. She read the arrest reports on Shane Blakey Sanders’ unit had sent over earlier in the week. They were just minor infractions, two for shoplifting; and another for having a bong and a joint on his person, which coincidently is what he shoplifted on one occasion. She scanned the file, not quite sure what she was looking for. Up until this incident, Shane seemed to be non-violent in nature. According to his brother, or whatever their true relationship was, he was a gentle, naïve soul and wouldn’t hurt a fly. Obviously, when push came to shove, Shane had a breaking point and he reached it the day he shot his own . . . .

  She made a conscience effort to stop herself from referring to the man Shane shot as his father. Not only wasn’t the man his father, it was apparent now, the recently deceased gentleman was nothing more than an alleged kidnapper and pedophile.

  Frank’s investigation hadn’t stopped with the Ward child. He left a second folder labeled Kolakowski. Jean recognized the name immediately. As soon as she saw the twenty-five year old age progression photo of T.J., she flashed back to the man in the hospital. The face didn’t change. The baby face was gone, but the curly brown hair, the almond-shaped hazel eyes remained unchanged. Why didn’t she see that immediately?

  Now she had another job to do and she didn’t have a clue how she was going to handle this one. She called Marty; but it went directly to his voicemail, so she left him a message informing him of what Frank had found out.

  In the meantime, she decided she would track down the biological parents of the man who was now known to them as Shane Blakey, but was most likely the missing child, Charlie Ward.

  How and where do you start to tell a parent whose child disappeared twenty-five years ago, that the child was alive and well? Can anyone come home after all this time, as if no time had passed?

  No matter how you looked at it, both Charlie Ward and T.J. Kolakowski died the day Archie Blakey decided to grab them and take them from their families. She could not fathom what the parents were going through the past few decades.

  What would she do if it were her and Glenn? What if the child in question was Bethany or her son Cliff? Would she have given up hope? Would the ache of the loss be so bad that she would rather her child be dead so she could mourn the loss and get a sense of closure? Would she rather her child be dead than suffer the injustices that these two boys, now grown men, most likely went through?

  Or would she choose instead not to give up; the hope that one day her prayers would be answered and a day like this would come? She couldn’t even fathom what the parents had gone through all these years. Her son, Cliff, went away to college and every day she missed him. She would get a gnawing feeling, deep down in her gut, that wouldn’t let up if she was expecting a phone call and it didn’t come on time. That feeling wouldn’t go away until she heard his voice. What would it be like to feel that gnawing sensation every day of her life for twenty-five years or more? Would she give up hope? How would she deal with the absolute horror of not knowing if her child was dead or alive? Would she choose not to give up hope, praying every day, eve
ry moment?

  She suddenly sensed she was not alone. Her friend and coworker, Detective Kathy Blackwelder, managed to find an empty spot on Jean’s cluttered desk and sat down on the now empty space.

  “Here,” she said, handing her a half cup of coffee. “You look like you can use this.” The hot steam rose from the cup like a vertical cloud of gray. “You okay, Jean? Hot flashes gone?” Kathy swung her long legs straight out in an effort to stretch her muscles.

  “How long are these things going to last? I feel like someone has inserted a bag of charcoal the length of my entire body and set it on fire. Tell me it’s just temporary!” She pleaded.

  She took a sip of the hot coffee and decided to turn the caffeine lift into a cold drink. She walked over to the office cooler, and grabbing some ice cubes, carefully dropped them in the cup.

  “I thought you might want to do that, so I left room in the cup for you.”

  Jean sat back down. She rolled her chair up against the desk so she had something sturdier to lean on.

  “Kathy, how would you handle it? What do you think it would be like? To have your kid back after all those years?”

  “I honestly can’t answer that, Jean. I mean, for all intents and purposes, those two little boys, they no longer exist. You just can’t open the door to their old bedroom and expect them to fit into their old lives. It’s not only their old clothes that are going to be the wrong size, but nothing is going to fit! They will never be who they were supposed to be, never. For all it’s worth, those boys died the day Blakey abducted them. To be honest, I wouldn’t want to be the parents of either of these kids for anything in the world. I hate to say it, but I guess it’s lucky the one boy’s father blew his brains out.”

  Kathy knew she was being harsh, so she apologized with the tilt of her head. Jean didn’t respond or argue.

  “You want to come with me, Kathy, and help me track down and notify this boy’s parents? They moved out of state; but I have an address and phone number for one of the father’s relatives, a Kevin Ward. He’s a cousin, or something, and still resides in the area. I don’t want to just call these people out of the blue and say ‘Hey, we may have found your long lost kid.’”

  Kathy looked at her; a slight look of bewilderment crossed her face. She popped a breath mint in her mouth, offered one to Jean, who snapped it out of Kathy’s hand.

  “Marty doesn’t want to be in on it?” Kathy questioned her. “He deserves to take credit for this one, Jean.” And then added, “not only is he stone-cold handsome, but he can even make an old married woman, like me, think about adultery. You know he’s turning out to be one a hell of a detective.”

  Jean shook her head and laughed at the thought of Kathy drooling over her partner.

  Suddenly her phone rang. She looked at the screen. It was Marty. After a few minutes of listening and talking, she hung up. She turned back to Kathy. “That was Marty, he knows. In fact, Marty and Sanders are going to make the notification to Troy Blakey’s family. I mean T.J. Kolakowski’s family, his aunt. She’s actually a family friend. Actually, she’s Marty’s next door neighbor. Apparently, they were all at Marty’s mother’s funeral the day the kid disappeared.”

  “Yeah, I heard. Yeah, sure, I’ll go with you. Let me get my jacket.” Kathy lifted her bottom off the desk and walked away.

  The Captain started to cough, causing the intruder to have a sudden abrupt outburst.

  “Shut up! Just shut up.” He cupped his hands over his ears and pressed down in an effort to stop the noise from invading his thoughts. He was afraid not to look, though; he didn’t want to not pay attention. ‘Pay attention!’ He heard his old man’s voice scream at him. He felt again the sting of the old man’s fist against his cheek.

  He caught a glimpse of Tristan, fear flashed across the little boy’s face.

  “I’m sorry, Tris, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” He took his hands away from his ears and knelt down in front of the boy. “You know I wouldn’t hurt you, I’m not like him, Tristan. I wouldn’t hurt you.”

  He was sweating. Beads of perspiration formed above his brow, his hair, uncombed and messy from wearing the helmet, began falling in front of his right eye. He pushed it back with a trembling hand.

  Tristan stood frozen, except for the deliberate movement of his eyes, which floated downwards, focusing on the hand that held the pistol.

  “I can’t let them catch me, Tristan, they are going to put me in prison. I had to shoot him. I had to. I had to stop him. That bastard killed M’leigh!”

  His voice took on a softer tone, “Your mama, Tristan. He told us he did it. He stood right there and told Troy he broke M’leigh’s neck. I loved her, and he took her away from me, he took her away from all of us.”

  Hope took advantage of the apparent calmness to try and communicate with the anxious man. “If the man was going to shoot you; if it happened the way you say it happened, then it was self-defense. Nobody is going to fault you for that, you did nothing wrong. The police will understand.” She tried to reason with him, taking a great effort to keep herself calm.

  “Your father . . . .”

  “Stop!” he shouted at her. “Don’t call him that. I don’t think that bastard was my real father. I think he stole me! That’s why Troy and me came here in the first place, to find out the truth. I think he kidnapped us both, just like he did that little girl we found in the cabin. But that son of a bitch shot Troy, and I had no other choice. He stood there and laughed at me. I had no other choice, I had to shoot him.”

  A bead of sweat traveled down the side of his nose and the hand holding the gun was shaking. The volume of his voice gained in intensity. He started to pace back and forth.

  “Please, you’re scaring him.” Hope blurted out, as she tried to hide her own desperate fear. Feeling Tristan’s body tremble under her arm, she gathered him closer to her body by tightening the grip of her arm around his chest.

  “No, no, Tristan, tell them, you’re not scared of me.” He reached over and grabbed the boy’s arm, breaking the hold Hope had on him and pulled him towards him. Now it was Shane who had his arm wrapped around the child. He leaned down and put his nose up against the boy’s dark hair, as if he was breathing in his scent. “He’s not afraid of me,” he repeated, “he knows I would never do anything to hurt him. He’s just as much my son as Troy’s. I could even be his daddy. He loves me. I love him.” He lowered his lips and brushed them up against Tristan’s scalp.

  Hope looked confused. “I thought that—”

  “Yeah,” he interrupted. “Everyone thinks Troy is his daddy. We don’t really know for sure. M’leigh, that’s Tristan’s mama, she . . . we both loved her. We both loved her and she loved us both. When we found out that M’ was pregnant, the old man tossed a coin. He said whoever won the coin toss was going to marry her, make it legit. He told us there would be trouble if she didn’t get married, her being so young. The old man said it landed on heads. So Troy got to marry her. The old bastard, he wanted Troy to win that toss, I really think he fixed it. I never got to see how it landed. None of us did.” He hugged Tristan closer, as if he was afraid to let him go.

  “Besides, the old man was always telling me what a loser and hothead I am. The bastard told me I didn’t have the brains to make a baby. So he said we should put Troy’s name down on the birth certificate; and I went along with it. I didn’t want my kid to think his daddy was a loser. Besides, if Archie thought the kid was mine, he would have treated him bad. Troy was his favorite. He would never hurt Tristan if he thought Troy was his real daddy. The old man hated me. That’s why he killed her, to get back at me!”

  He was talking, but he wasn’t focused on any of them anymore. It was if he was in a different realm, another place and another time.

  Tristan was now facing Hope and looking directly into her eyes. His mouth was open and his bottom lip was trembling uncontrollably. She noticed his little Adam’s apple moving, as if he was actually speaking out loud, y
et no sound was coming out. It was his eyes doing the actually communication. Up until now, Hope didn’t have a problem reading his expressions, but this particular facial expression was new. She was trying to decipher what was happening when Tristan suddenly chomped down, sinking his teeth deep into Shane’s forearm, momentarily startling him. In pain, the man let out a cry of anguish. The unexpected action of the child caused him to release his grip on the gun, causing it to slip from his grasp, letting it fall to the floor; causing the gun to discharge accidently. The loud explosion caught them all off guard and silence followed, as if every ounce of air was sucked up and everyone in the room tried to follow the projectile of the bullet. When they realized they were all safe, both Hope and Shane scrambled to reach down to recover the gun.

  Hope was a fraction of a second too late. Shane recovered his composure and swooped up the pistol just seconds before Hope was able to grab it by the barrel. Their eyes met, and Hope thought she saw sadness behind the façade, but Shane turned away, immediately breaking the visual contact.

  Turning back to Tristan, a look of hurt flashed across Shane’s face and then a look of concern, not for himself but the boy. “Don’t pop a tear! Please, buddy, don’t pop a tear!” He got down on one knee and grabbed the boy’s jaw with his free hand. When a sound that could only be described as the result of being in pain came out of Tristan, Shane realized he was holding him too tight and loosened his grip.

  “I’m sorry, Tris, I don’t mean to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt nobody. Honest, I don’t.”

  He let him go and fell back against the wall behind him, landing hard on his buttocks, but it was if his whole body was numb. He didn’t feel any pain. “I got to think.” His right hand ran repeatedly through his thick blond hair in frustration, his eyes shifting back and forth from Hope to Tristan to the front window, his left hand now keeping a much tighter grip on the weapon.