Sanders and Marty were back at the station and Marty was just about to answer his phone messages from Jean when it suddenly hit him, the thing that was bothering him about Shane’s mug shot that Sanders had faxed over. Marty visualized the scar on the man’s forehead. He turned to Sanders and asked to see the mug shot he had folded in his pocket and made his way downstairs to the Juvenile division where they had a corkboard filled with photos of missing children. He could hear Sanders breathing heavily in pursuit.
Marty used to try and memorize those photographs every time he passed by that corkboard; but mostly he did it hoping to never forget the face of his neighbor’s little boy. But this time he passed over the one fading poster of the three-year-old T.J. which had been taken a month before his abduction, and he scanned the other photos and flyers. Marty’s eyes finally rested on the photograph he was looking for. It was a picture of the little boy that was abducted from Orange County; the one that disappeared within weeks of T.J.’s abduction. That picture showed the boy, who was also three years old, with a scar exactly the same shape and in the same spot on his forehead as the one in Shane’s mug shot. It was just too much alike to be a coincidence. Marty compared the eyes, both photos showed the left eye slightly drooping, the hairline, the fullness of the lips, they were all the same. The blond hair was slightly darker now, but the hairline was the same.
Marty turned to the computer monitor and tapped on the keyboard to bring up another set of files. He was looking for the file that contained the photograph with an aged enhanced comparison.
There it was. There was no denying it now. Sanders hit the nail on the head. Shane Blakey’s intuition about being one of those kidnapped boys was right on the mark. He was not the biological son of the man that raised him. He was in no way related to the man who called himself Archie Blakey. Shane Blakey was someone else’s child and he had been stolen. He wasn’t Shane Blakey at all, but the son of Ben and Sue Ward of Orange County, New York, whose little boy Charlie was abducted from an Orange County playground twenty-five years earlier, less than two months after Marty’s neighbor, T.J., went missing.
Marty was actually shaking as he clicked on the next file. He momentarily shut his eyes, almost afraid to find out the truth. He was conflicted. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to be right about Troy being T.J. He was terrified either way it turned out. Could he be mistaken, and Troy Blakey was not the little boy that lived next door and vanished that day twenty-five years ago? He pulled up the flyer with the photo of T.J. It seemed to take forever to download, but finally flashed across the computer screen. Next, he pulled up the computerized age progression photograph, grateful this time it seemed to download faster. When the progress bar was full, he printed them both off. He took out the photograph of Troy Blakey that Sanders had faxed over. Marty took all three of the photos and laid them down side by side. There it was, the absolute proof. It was right in front of him, in black and white. There was no question in his mind now that the man lying in the hospital bed was the little boy who spent the first three years of his life living next door to him, Tim Jr.
So now it was conclusive. Now part of the puzzle had been solved. It wasn’t Tristan who was a missing child at all. It was his father and his uncle Shane who were the stolen children. Both abducted by Archie Blakey from their families at the tender age of three. The man who was lying in the morgue, the one they identified as Archie Blakey, had kidnapped two little boys and ripped them from their families and kept them for twenty-five years, and they never even knew it. The two boys grew up thinking that this man who tortured them, who abused them mentally and physically, was their own flesh and blood; and only by chance, and the suspicious instinct of one of the boys, did they learn any different.
Marty called Jean and learned they were both on the same page. Jean and Frank had done some of their own investigating and had discovered the same information. She told Marty she was heading out to see if she could find a relative of Shane/Charlie’s Ward’s. She thought there might be a chance that Shane had found out the same information and was headed in that same direction. Marty told her he was going to track down his neighbor, Mrs. Kolakowski, and give her the news. He was going to inform her that her nephew, T.J., was not only alive and well, but close enough for her to touch.
In order to keep the officers and the public safer, OSHA had set new guidelines which required all newly issued vehicles to be equipped with hands-free cellphones. When the budget allowed, OSHA guidelines were followed and the department was beginning to issue their officers the newer vehicles. As the older vehicles were phased out, new ones were issued, equipped with the newest technical equipment and hands-free devices. Jean, having seniority, was one of the first in her department to get one of these high-tech rides, much to her dismay. Her husband may be an engineer, but she found herself to be technologically challenged. When her cellphone rang, Jean’s fingers fumbled around the dashboard monitor, trying to figure out how to answer the call.
It was Kathy that touched the Answer icon on the dashboard’s screen and connected the call.
“Hello. Whitley here.” Jean leaned into the dashboard awkwardly.
They were both surprised to hear whose voice came out of the speaker. It was Jean’s daughter, Bethany.
“Mom, something’s wrong at Marty and Hope’s house.” Her daughter spoke as if she was having trouble trying to catch her breath.
“What do you mean, honey?” Jean asked, as she tried to concentrate on her driving and the busy traffic on the road before her.
“Dylan was driving me home and he thought he saw his bike and the guy that stole it. We saw him turn down the path in the woods, behind Marty’s house, so we went to check it out. It’s his bike, Mom. We knocked on the door so we could use the phone and we heard someone talking inside. Dylan says he thought he saw someone move the curtains and look out, but they wouldn’t come to the door. We knocked a few times and Dylan walked around the back. Mom, Hope’s car is in the driveway,” the girl said, without so much as taking a breath.
Knowing that her daughter was not normally a drama queen and the apparent tension she heard in the teenage girl’s speech gave Jean cause for concern. A wave of anxiety rushed through her body. Something felt wrong and she wasn’t going to take any chances.
“Bethany, tell Dylan to drive you home and wait there. I want you to call nine-one-one as soon as you hang up. I’m on my way there now.” She waited for her daughter to respond, but got silence.
“Bethany, did you hear me?”
“Mom, Dylan went to check things out. He went around the back of the house, he hasn’t come back yet.”
Bethany had the phone pressed tight against her ear as she started to make her way in the direction Dylan had gone only moments before. She started to make her way through the newly budding shrubbery that lined the side of the brick ranch home.
“Bethany, I want you to leave there this minute!” She leaned in even closer to the dashboard as if it would help relay her message.
“But Mom, Dylan, I can’t see him! He must have gotten inside.”
Now it was more than concern she heard in Bethany’s words, it was panic.
“Bethany, listen to me closely.” Silence. “Bethany, dammit, answer me!”
“I’m here, Mom.”
Jean let out the air from her lungs. “I need you to call nine-one-one, and I want you to go down to Marty’s neighbor’s house and knock on the door. If they don’t answer, go to the first house that does. I want you to get away from that house and go to the neighbors. Now!”
“But Mom, Dylan . . . .”
“Bethany, just do what I say. Please!” Her heart was pounding. She didn’t want to debate this with her teenage daughter. The girl might be in danger and she was not in a position at the moment to help.
“Okay, okay. I’m calling now, I added it as a third party.”
“Honey, I’m hanging up. Please go to the neighbors, do it now. I’m on my way!”
She
stepped on the gas pedal and she said a silent prayer that her daughter would do what she told her to.
She signaled to Kathy by waving her right arm. She couldn’t speak. So she told Kathy to call Marty by mouthing it out. She knew she got through to her friend when saw Kathy take her cellphone out of her purse and tap the contact screen on the phone. Jean abruptly pulled the steering wheel to the left and made a sharp U-turn, causing the driver of the vehicle directly behind her to come to a sudden stop and yell out a greeting with a very sexually descriptive narrative.
On the way to Mrs. Kolakowski’s home, Marty rehearsed what he was going to say in his mind and related his apprehension to Sanders.
“How the hell am I going to tell this woman that the little boy she thought died twenty-five years ago is very much alive; and the gunshot victim she has been reading about in the newspapers is really him. I mean, this is soap opera stuff, not real life! What kind of shock is this going to be to the woman’s system?” Marty asked Sanders as they made their way towards the white brick colonial home his neighbor had called home for over a quarter of a century. The veteran detective put his hand on Marty’s back in a show of support.
“I don’t know, Keal. This is a tough one. It happens occasionally that a missing kid gets returned to his or her parents years after they were abducted, but I don’t know if they follow them all up to see to see how everyone adjusts. There was that one story. You know about that kid Steven, who was kidnapped and showed up years later, crap, what was his last name? They made a movie . . . Steven Staynor, that’s it. Kid came home after years of living with his abductor and had a terrible time adjusting. His whole family did. In fact, his older brother turned out to be some kind of serial killer, you know the one they caught in the Yellowstone murders . . . remember? Yeah; and the kid Steven ended up getting killed in a motorcycle accident. Then there are those two girls . . . the one from Colorado, Elizabeth Smart, and the other one, you know the one who was held in the guy’s backyard all those years. You know, the one that had two babies by the kidnapper? Jaycee Dugard. I have seen both of those young women on television interviews and they seem to be doing extremely well . . . they seem to be doing all right, but who the hell knows? Then there is this last one; the three girls that the sicko kept locked up in his house, in Chicago. I guess you would have to ask their families. They would be the ones to ask.”
He knew Sanders was right. Who the hell knew what to expect? Troy was kidnapped at the age of three and claimed he didn’t have any recollection of his life before he was abducted. He doesn’t remember his biological parents or the kind aunt who came to live with him after his mother died. What kind of relationship could they possibly have now? Not to mention that the fact the boy, who was now a man, was likely very emotionally damaged from years of sexual and mental abuse and a life of dysfunction. Where was this all going to lead? The thought crossed his mind that maybe Mrs. K was better off if she never found out what he was about to tell her, the little boy she nurtured, the little boy she mourned for, was only ten minutes away, recovering from gunshot wounds inflicted on him by the man who he grew up believing was his biological father.
“What a mess!” Marty muttered under his breath, as he pulled his vehicle in the driveway and slowly unhooked his seatbelt. He waited for Sanders to exit the car before he made his way up the path to the front door. Marty turned and looked at Sanders one last time and shook his head as he reluctantly rang the doorbell.
She greeted them with a broad smile as she wiped off the white flour that covered her hands on her apron. The sweet aroma of peanut butter and some other ingredients he couldn’t quite recognize beguiled their nasal passages. Mrs. K was one of the few women Marty knew that still practiced the art of baking while wearing old-fashioned attire. She always reminded him of June Cleaver, Beaver’s mom, adorned in a strand of pearls and a full apron to protect her clothing while baking. Marty realized Sanders could also smell the sweet treat from where he stood in the threshold of the doorway. Memories flashed before him. The very same aroma of peanut butter cookies had enticed his twin Tommy and himself on numerous occasions. The two of them would visit the woman, using all sorts of lame excuses, knowing quite well a chewy, sweet treat was waiting for them.
Although surprised to see Marty accompanied by someone unknown to her, she acted as if his visit was as natural as if not a moment of time had passed by.
Marty introduced Sanders to her and she immediately realized that he had caught the scent of her baked goods. “Hello. You’re new. I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure. Please, come in. I’ve just pulled out a hot batch of cookies from the oven, and I was hoping someone would come by and test out the first batch. Make sure I got it right.” She used the back of her hand to push a few stray gray hairs from her hazel-colored eyes. Some flour came loose and dusted her eyelashes in the white powder. It had been quite a while since Marty had been to visit, but nothing had changed. The same chocolate brown shag rug covered the living area. Mrs. K still had the old Sony color console television set sitting against the far wall. A small black box sat atop of it. Marty recognized it to be a converter to change the analog signal into a digital one. Sanders and Marty followed her into the kitchen area where a flood of memories came rushing back to Marty.
The dining table was still the same, but the chairs had been reupholstered. The same black and white linoleum that Marty had watched his brother Danny and little T.J., in sagging diapers, crawl all over as babies hadn’t changed either. But it was still as clean and bright as it was the day it was installed. For the most part, the house was frozen in time. Nothing had really changed since the day T.J. went missing.
Carefully taking the tray of cookies from the oven wearing a thick oven mitt, Mrs. K placed them on the counter and then carefully used a rubber spatula to lift each one off the cookie sheet and into a green ceramic bowl.
She pleaded with them to sit down.
“I have a fresh container of real cow’s milk. You know that farm stand, Marty? You know, the one over by the big flea market? Well, they started selling fresh milk. The real stuff; you know, you have to shake it up, because the cream it just is so thick and . . . it’s so delicious, would you like some?”
Marty took comfort in her chatting. He was still trying to figure out how to tell her his news. Sanders must have realized that he needed more time to get his thoughts together, so he continued with the small talk. “Now don’t tell my wife, ma’am, but these are the best peanut butter cookies I’ve ever had the pleasure to taste. And that’s saying a lot, because my wife, she’s a heck of a baker,” Sanders told her, trying to keep the crumbs in his mouth while he carefully let the flattery out.
She broke out in a wide smile and a dash of color rose to her cheeks. Her whole face lit up by the compliment. Marty hadn’t thought much of how she must have missed having a brood of kids hanging around. Her nieces were all grown and had families of their own, each one living in a different state. The closest niece, Coleen, was living in Massachusetts, and Elizabeth, the eldest, was living the farthest away, in Washington State. Marty’s family was also spread out; and they all lived busy lives, forgetting to pay attention to the wonderful woman who was there when they needed her so desperately, even though she was going through her own horrific trauma. She had a husband, and they seemed to be happy, but it never occurred to Marty how much she needed to be needed until this moment.
“Mrs. K, I have something to tell you, can you come sit down?” Marty pulled out a chair for her.
She looked at him suddenly, with caution. Fear replaced the smile. “Oh no, Marty, it’s not your dad. Please tell me that your father is well.”
“No.” He smiled and she smiled back. She was obviously feeling relieved. “The Captain is fine. In fact, he’s being released from the hospital and he’s coming home today.” Marty glanced at his watch. “In fact, Hope is probably picking him up right now.”
“Oh, thank the Lord. You scared me for a moment, Marty.”
She took another deep breath and tapped her chest near her heart. “You got so serious there for a minute.” She began to put the smile back on her face, but she stopped when she glanced over and caught the expression on Sanders’ face with her peripheral vision.
“Mrs. K, there is something that I need to tell you; and I don’t know exactly how to say it. So please bear with me.”
She nodded; but Marty could see her hands begin to grip and twist the towel she was holding. “Is your husband home? I would like him to hear this as well.”
Marty saw her hands seem to relax and she stopped twisting the towel into a knot. Marty realized, at that moment, she must have thought there was a possibility that he was there in official capacity to give her bad news about her husband.
“No, Al’s not here. Marty, you’re scaring me. Please, what is this about?”
Marty was just about to tell her when his phone beeped.
Being old-school, the Captain insisted on keeping the old landline phone system. The old man refused, time and time again, to give up the convenience and the reliability of the old analog phones and had them scattered throughout the house, including the bathroom. The original black rotary dial wall phone that hung on the wall in the kitchen was still in the same spot it had been for the past fifty years.
The volume of the bell was set on high, and when the unfamiliar tone began to ring, it startled both Tristan and Shane. Shane swung his whole body around trying to locate where the loud ringing was coming from. Tristan’s body remained stiff and his eyes remained targeted on Hope’s. His lips were slightly apart and moving, as if he was trying to form words and speak, but there was no sound coming out.
When Shane realized where the ringing was coming from, he turned and was about to tell Hope to answer it, when he heard a loud banging on the door. He immediately motioned for his captives to be silent by raising the gun in the air and putting his finger to his lips. Hope began to lift the receiver from the hook to answer the phone, but Shane stopped her. He shook his head, letting her know in no uncertain terms, she should not answer the ringing phone.
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