by Anne Hagan
Speaking much more softly, she pleaded, “I’m going to go in and get a shower and get dressed. After that, why don’t we go and grab lunch somewhere and then maybe just hang out and forget all of this for a little while; at least until you need to go to class?”
That’s when I dropped a bomb on our relationship. “I’m not going to class today either. In fact, I decided I’m dropping out, at least, for now. Maybe I’ll go back next semester. Maybe not.”
“What?” She was shouting again and spewed out a whole bunch of indignant crap at me but I tuned it out. I just didn’t want to listen. I grabbed my coat off its hook on the back of the door, picked up my car keys and announced I was going out. I left her standing there in her pajama’s.
Chapter 16 – A Find
Dana
Early Thursday Afternoon, February 19th
Morelville Ohio
I knew I should have been out spying on Roman Bakula some more but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I couldn’t concentrate on the case when all could do was worry about that poor little baby.
Making myself useful, I headed upstairs to do a little cleaning. Boo trailed right behind me. Mama always said, “Dusting is good therapy.” I wasn’t so sure about that but, we didn’t use the second floor much since it was just the two of us and, as I had noticed several nights before when we were getting Katie and Jef settled, nothing had seen a dust rag in a while.
After wiping down a stand Mama had found for the hallway when she went on her little decorating spree while we were off on our honeymoon, I pushed open the door to the room she’d set up as a guest room for us and stopped short. In all of the craziness of the past several days, I hadn’t thought about the fact that Katie stayed in there a couple of nights. We’d grabbed most of the stuff she’d brought for Jef when she disappeared but she still had some clothing and a few personal items of her own spread around.
I walked over to the bed and looked down at a plastic grocery bag that, from what I could see, held socks and hair ties, among other things. Sinking down on the bed beside the bag, my emotions overwhelmed me and I started to cry.
Boo moved to my feet and stared up at me intently. I reached down and stroked her cute little head. She tried to lick my hand. I gave her a little half smile then wiped at my tears with the back of my hand.
After taking a deep breath to try and gather my wits around me again, I decided it would be best to gather the stuff up and talk to Mel about what to do with it. It wasn’t much and it had little value but her family might want it or, I thought, Hannah might.
I nudged Boo back a little and stood. Katie had made the bed up when she’d gotten up Monday morning but I figured it would be best to strip it down and wash the sheets. Eventually, maybe, I thought, we’d use the room again.
When I got around to the other side of the bed, I realized there was a little backpack sitting on the floor; the kind like Beth and Cole carry to school. Hefting it, it felt pretty light. It was closed but the investigator in me came right out. I unzipped it and peered inside.
There was a small bible bound in soft, pliable leather in it and not much else. I pulled the book out and leafed through it. Though it had obviously been read, there were no markings in it other than Katie’s name, inscribed in ink, inside the front cover.
I placed the Bible on the bed and then reached around in the bottom of the main pocket of the bag. My fingers passed across what felt like a business card. Grasping it gently, I pulled it out and just barely got a glance at it when I heard a car crunched into the driveway down below.
Boo started hopping about in circles as if she knew exactly who was there and then ran for the bedroom door. I went and checked out the window first. Hannah was getting out of her car.
As I tucked the card in my pocket, I headed for the stairs.
###
“Why would you drop out of school? I thought you loved it...”
Hannah took a small sip of her hot chocolate, winced at the heat of it and replaced the cup on the table. She shook her head then and began, “I just don’t think I can do it right now. There’s so much...so much going on in my head. I called them before I came over here. I can go back when I get my head all straightened out, they said.”
I nodded because I felt her pain but I didn’t interrupt.
“Katie and I got pretty close while she was staying with us. It was like having a sister but one that didn’t Judge me for...well, you know, liking girls. She just listened and I tried hard to listen to her too. She loved being in the Order Dana, she did.” She looked at me for a response. I just nodded.
“She didn’t want to leave. She felt like she didn’t have any choice, you know?”
“I know.” After speaking with Mel, I knew more than Hannah did but that information wouldn’t change anything so I let it be.
There was more to this than just Katie and Jef though, I sensed that. “Anything else you want to talk about?” I asked her.
She blew across her cup and took another small sip and then, finding the liquid cooler, a little bigger one.
“I’m just going to come out with it; is everything all right at home; all right with you and Jamie?”
Her head dropped.
“Do you want to talk about it sweetie? It might help.”
She took a deep breath and looked up at me. I stirred the spoon around in my own cocoa but I didn’t drink, just waited.
“I think we’re probably going to break up,” she said. “Jamie’s mad about me wanting to leave school...I left the house and called them. She doesn’t even know I actually did it.”
“Oh, Hannah...”
“I know, but I just can’t do it right now; I can’t concentrate on it and she doesn’t understand that. It’s almost like she’s happy that Katie’s gone...almost.”
“I’m so sorry that you feel that way. Have you tried talking with Jamie about it?”
She shook her head. “We just end up arguing.”
“So what will you do? I mean, are you going to try and stick it out, are you going to leave there? Where would you go?”
She curled her hands around her still warm cup and gave me a half shrug. “I guess I’ll have to start looking for a little place. I love my job with Adornetto’s and they want to give me more hours.”
“You’re really happy there?”
Now she nodded. “I’m still apprenticing but I can do all of the pastry work for the restaurant plus, I occasionally work the line. I do love it and they pay me well enough. I really feel like I know enough that I don’t actually need to finish culinary school just to open my own bakery someday or to keep working there and bake cakes and stuff on the side. I’m getting all the pastry training I need for that, right where I am.”
“You don’t want to be a full-fledged chef someday?”
She shrugged again. “It isn’t necessary.” She drained her coca, got up and went to the sink to rinse her mug.
“Besides, I want to help to find Katie’s baby. I’m serious Dana. I want to raise it.”
“Sweetie, you’re so young. You have your whole life planned out...”
“He’s part of the plan and he wouldn’t be the first baby I practically raised.”
There was no doubt in my mind that she couldn’t juggle a job and child rearing...probably better than most, but there was so much else to consider.
I didn’t want to discourage her but, I explained as gently as I could, “The longer time goes on, the less likely it is that Jef will be found and, even if by some miracle he is, it’s in the state’s hands now that Katie is gone over who has any say in the child’s life. Ultimately, the courts will decide.”
“I know that. I believe that Jef will be found and I believe I can make a good case to be his mother.”
Her faith was unshakable; I had to give her that. I stood and delivered my own cup to the sink where she took it from me and rinsed it. I leaned back against the counter and jammed my hands in my jeans pockets.
When I did that, I found the business card I’d stuffed in one earlier. After looking at it myself and seeing only a small flower logo and a phone number on it, I showed it to Hannah.
“When you got here, I was straightening up, upstairs. I found this with Katie’s things. It’s an odd business card.” I handed it to her and pointed at it. “There’s no name or anything; just a phone number. Do you recognize it or know where she might have got it?”
“No,” she said simply as she handed it back to me and then reminded me that Katie didn’t even have her own phone.
“I’m going to call it then and see what it’s all about.”
Hannah followed as I moved into the next room and picked up the house phone. I dialed the number and while it rang, I asked her, “6-1-4 is a Columbus area code, right?”
She just nodded.
After the fourth ring an automated answering service picked up and played a vague message asking only for the caller to leave a name and number. I hung up.
“Come with me out to my shack,” I said to Hannah. “Boo needs to pee and while we’re out with her we can do some checking on this number.”
Chapter 17 - Victorian
The number turned out to be unlisted but, using resources available to me via my association with Young International, I was able to pinpoint it to an address pretty easily. We pulled it up on Google Maps. It turned out to be associated with an old Victorian home in an area of Columbus known as the Italian Village. I’d never been there but it looked like a nice area.
After a few more clicks, I was able to find out from the Franklin County auditor’s site that the building was zoned commercial and held in a private trust managed by a large bank.
“Might be an apartment building or something,” I said to Hannah. I flipped back to the satellite image and then checked the street view image. There was nothing unusual or anything that stood out about the place at all.
I sighed. “Looks like a dead end, my friend.”
Boo scratched at the door and Hannah let her into my little hut, as I liked to call it. Mel had a gas heater rigged up professionally for me which I kept on low all the time so my computer equipment didn’t freeze. We cranked it up a bit when we entered so we were plenty warm now. Boo took her usual spot right in front of the unit.
“So now what? What’s Mel working on; do you know?”
“You know she can’t talk a lot about police business. I know though that she’s working on trying to find Katie’s killer.”
“But what about Jef?”
“That’s in the hands of the FBI now. Of course, she’ll work any lead she finds there but finding kidnapped kids is what the FBI does.”
I swiveled in my chair, looked up and studied her face for a moment. She held my eye. “Look,” I finally told her, “there’s not a lot we can do. I had hoped this card would provide some sort of a lead but it doesn’t appear to be anything important. Meanwhile, you my friend, have some things you need to get sorted out and you really should have a heart to heart talk with Jamie.”
“I know...I know, but I don’t even know where to begin.” She gave me a pleading look.
“Honey, how do you really feel about Jamie?”
Hannah let out a heavy breath and sank down along the wall to assume a sitting position. Boo, noticing that, crawled right into her lap. She stroked her fur absently as she tried to frame her thoughts.
“I love her...or I did...I don’t know. I guess I’m just not really sure about anything long term for us. I mean, we’re from – as you’ve said yourself – different worlds. Jamie’s older than me but sometimes she acts younger, you know what I mean?”
I just nodded.
“She likes to go out and dance and party and have a good time and I only like those things a little. I’m not even old enough to go to some of the places they want to go and that annoys her. Anyway, it’s fun sometimes but sometimes I don’t even care what she does or her and her friends do. I’d rather do stuff at home or with Katie...” She stopped then.
“You’re still rooted in a lot of the ways of the Amish, where home and family came first.”
“I suppose so.”
“I know so; and there’s nothing wrong with that. Eventually, you’ll find someone else who feels the same or find someone you can agree on some middle ground with.”
###
After Hannah left, I turned back to the computer. Picking up the business card again, I tapped it against the desk as I worked on possibilities in my head. I ran through a few other look ups and learned, after about 15 minutes of digging deeper, that the trust the building was held in belonged to a foreign company, Grigori Resources.
I decided I’d go and stalk Roman Bakula for one more day on Friday and, while he was at work, I’d swing into Columbus and have a look at the house. I figured, what could it hurt?
I jotted the actual address down on the card, tucked it in my pocket and then buckled down to do some more computer searching on the IT guru I was actually supposed to be investigating.
An hour and a half later, I rubbed my eyes, swiveled away from the desk and stood. Boo looked at me, half stood up and then did her usual doggy stretch before coming to sit at my feet and wait for whatever was next.
“He’s either squeaky clean, baby girl,” I told her, “or he’s so good at covering his digital footprints there’s nothing left out there to find.”
She just did her usual head tilt and looked at me expectantly.
Chapter 18 - Sketch
Mel
Thursday Afternoon, February 19th
Muskingum County Sheriff’s Department
Annemarie Beatty was a good sport. She spent more than two hours sitting in my conference room working with the FBI’s sketch artist. What he came up with was a composite that she claimed looked as much like the guy that approached Katie Hershberger at the WIC office as she could possibly remember.
I had my assistant Holly send the sketch out to all of the services and to the news stations and papers. As I suspected would probably happen, within a couple of hours his picture was being shown everywhere online and on television and Shane’s phone started ringing off the hook. Everyone in the viewing area seemed to think they knew the guy. Within two hours of the first call, we had more than 30 leads to follow.
With a lead on a potential suspect, the FBI stepped in to assist with the murder investigation as well. It was getting harder for anyone to deny that the two crimes weren’t directly related.
I gave Hannah a call and asked her to come by the station to look at the sketch to see if she could remember the guy being there that day. To my surprise, she told me she’d just left Morelville and she’d be happy to stop...anything to help, she said.
“I remember a man sitting behind us but I really didn’t pay a lot of attention to him.”
Hannah looked over the sketch again. “I think this looks like him. From what I remember, it’s pretty close.”
“You’re sure?” I asked her.
“Pretty sure.”
The artist had sketched him in black and white and mostly from the neck up. I needed a better affirmation than ‘pretty sure’ so I went at her again. “Can you remember anything about what he was wearing?”
“Dark colors...all black, I think or, at least his coat was and maybe his pants were. They might have been dark blue, now that I think about it.”
Now we were getting somewhere. “You live so close to that office. Have you ever seen him around anywhere before, near your place, anywhere you shop, eat or hang out in the area?”
“No, I don’t think so. I remember seeing him kind of from that day but not before that.”
###
There was a large scale effort by law enforcement in Ohio and in the neighboring states to find the man that Beatty and Hannah both seemed to recall and hopefully to find Katie’s son. I wasn’t any more in charge of the manhunt once the FBI stepped in than I was of the kidnapping case but the Bureau was using some of my building spa
ce to coordinate some of their effort from and since it was Shane’s phone everyone was calling their tips into, they kept me in the loop.
I wasn’t born yesterday. I knew the FBI was the most focused on finding the child. Their task force chief confided that they that they’d been working some other disappearances and stolen babies that they felt had a similar MO in a several county area.
I believed the man we were all looking for was not only a kidnapper but a murderer and I wanted to find him personally and make sure he was charged with Katie’s murder too.
I pulled Mason into my office, shut the door and her and I and Holly put our heads together to brainstorm ideas on ways to track him down. Me going it alone and trying to figure it out myself wasn’t an option. We didn’t come up with much between us though. I had to satisfy myself with knowing that now that the guys’ picture was out there on the airwaves, someone in the know might turn him in. I prayed that he was on the move out where he could be caught and that he didn’t just hunker down and wait for it to all blow over.
Down in my gut, I worried most of all that Jef was probably already in the hands of a parent or parents who paid a lot of money to adopt him and, as sad as that made me, I knew I needed to find justice for Katie too.
###
8:40 PM, Thursday, February 19th
Morelville, Ohio
The station didn’t close until 9:00 and Kris was working so I stopped by there on my way home.
“Looks like you’ve had a long day,” she greeted me.
“You don’t know the half of it. Seems quiet in here though.”
“It’s been slow. What’s up? You didn’t stop here to talk about my day or the weather.”
“No, actually I want you to take a look at something.” I pulled out a copy of the sketch and showed it to her. “Does this look like either of the guys that...”