by Anne Hagan
Chapter 29 – A Sighting
Mel
12:37 PM, Saturday, February 21st
A Gas Station on Rt. 60, Southwest of Dresden, Ohio
“He parked a red Ford, a Focus I think, at a pump on the other side of the island. I only caught the first couple of plate numbers but the guy looked like that drawing they keep showing on the news.” The 60 something year old station attendant waved his right hand up and out toward the television mounted on the wall over the drink coolers.
“I couldn’t remember what the hell number I was supposed to call so I just dialed 911 like the owner’s been pounding into me all these years. You and your men...pardon me Miss,” he dipped his head toward Janet, “you can handle this. I don’t want no part of it, just doin’ what’s right, is all.”
“Which way did he go when he left?” I asked him.
“Pulled out of here, headed northeast.”
“We’ve had a lot of false leads, Sheriff.”
I looked back over my shoulder, through the glass doors at the old guy who was watching me too. Turning so he couldn’t read my expression, I told her, “This one’s on to something.”
“How’s that?
“The farm where Katie’s body was found is only ten minutes from here.” I didn’t bother to reveal that Dana had nearly tangled with a guy in a maroon colored Ford.
“So, now what?”
“We take a look around after we give the tip to the FBI task force.”
Chapter 30 – Now What?
No baby, no surprise, I thought. They know someone is catching on to them. They left Jef somewhere else and they’re packing up everything incriminating and taking it off site too. I’m sure they won’t take it to their house in Bexley, so where will they take it? I knew I was going to have to follow them, when they left.
Once I snuck back out of the house and got back to my dad’s car, I texted Mama our signal then I pulled out and found a spot a way down Hamlett street where, with the binoculars I remembered to grab this time, I could watch and wait. Within five minutes of sending the signal, I saw Mama and Hannah leave. They drove off the opposite way of where I was parked, much to my relief.
The white sedan the Arnoff’s had gotten into on Friday evening was parked at the curb across from the house, facing in my direction. If they were getting in the car I now could see with my binoculars was a Cadillac model when they left, and coming this way, it wasn’t ideal for me but I didn’t have a lot of alternatives.
I was so busy trying to figure out a plan to get turned around without losing them, I almost missed them backing out of the driveway in a black car I hadn’t seen before. When I’d come in the back, I didn’t bother to look around and notice it. I just made a beeline for the root cellar door. Now it was headed in the same direction Mama and Hannah had gone.
Not knowing at first if one or both of them was in that car, I had no choice but to get in gear before I lost sight of it and follow it.
We drove out of Columbus entirely getting on first I-670 North, then State Route 161 staying on that as it successively turned into State Route 37 and 16 in turn. A man was driving and I could see at some points a woman lean slightly left from the passenger seat. They didn’t seem to be conscious of me but the further along we went, the further I hung back, putting as much traffic between me and them as I dared to do while trying not to lose visual site of them. I didn’t want to be noticed and, fortunately for me, there was a lot of Saturday afternoon traffic to use for cover.
When I started to see signs for Dresden, I began to realize that we might be nearing the end of the line. My thinking was dashed when we turned off of Route 16 onto State Route 60, going south. We would be bypassing the entire town, shooting down my theory.
My dismay was short lived. Just south of the last exit for the town proper, the car slowed, then turned off to the right. As I came up on the spot where it turned off, I saw that it was an Amish style farm. There was another vehicle in the driveway, the maroon Ford.
Lacking any sort of vantage point at all to stop at, I did the only thing I could do; I drove right on by. In my rearview mirror, I saw a man get out of the driver’s side and the trunk lid pop up.
I drove nearly another quarter of a mile before I found a place where I could get turned around, park and sort of keep the car hidden from view. Try as I might though, I didn’t have a very good view myself of the farm.
Fearing that the three of them were going to take the paperwork I thought they might have in the black car out of it and destroy it, I broke down and called Mel.
Chapter 31 – Baby?
Mel
1:08 PM, Saturday, February 21st
“You need to get here ASAP and just trust me.”
“Where’s here?”
“I’m pulled off the road off of State Route 60, just south of Dresden, on the left about a quarter mile past some Amish farms that are on the right.”
Whether she knew it or not, she was close to the area where Katie was found.
“Oh, and I’m driving my dad’s car.”
“This better be good...”
“Trust me, please? Just get here or get a patrol unit here quick.”
“As it happens, I’m only a few miles away.”
Thinking fast, I had Mason call in patrol then I doubled around and came at the position where I thought I would find Dana from the south. She was where I suspected she would be and we stopped to collect her but not before I hopped out of my county vehicle and went over to her driver’s side window where she gave me a brief overview of her days’ activities. I wanted to kill her and kiss her all at the same time when I heard what she’d been up to and had dragged others into.
“We’re going to have a long talk, you and I later,” I told her, allowing just a little bit of anger to seep out in my voice.
“I know.”
“Do you? You could have been seriously hurt or killed Dana...or your mother or Hannah!”
“I know, Mel. Let’s just nail these scumbags and you can have me drawn and quartered. I don’t care, I don’t. I was only thinking of Jef and so were they.”
We just stared at each other for several long seconds. She gave in first but not out of weakness.
“I’m going in with you.”
“I figured as much. You’ve come this far. I don’t suppose you thought to put a vest on today though?”
“Didn’t wear it, but I brought it.”
“Get it on. At least one patrol vehicle will be responding. As soon as they’re here, we’ll roll.”
Less than five minutes later, we descended on the farm, me leading with Mason riding shotgun, a patrol vehicle behind me and Dana in her father’s car behind him. As we were stepping out of our vehicles another one of my department cruisers made the turn into the driveway.
I ordered my two deputies around to the back.
“That first car there belongs to the man I’ve been seeing that may be the one everyone is looking for,” Dana said.
The vehicle matched the description the gas station attendant had given too.
No one was outside. A black car stood behind the maroon Focus, the trunk of it unlatched but the car otherwise closed up. Using a single finger, I raised the trunk lid. Two boxes of files rested on the floor inside. I left those as they were for the moment and continued forward.
I approached the porch to the plain white house first with Janet a couple of feet behind me. I hadn’t even raised a foot to mount the low first step when the front door burst open. A man I estimated to be about age 60 hustled out with a woman following right behind him.
My hand was on my gun but I didn’t draw. They didn’t appear to be armed.
“Whoa,” I held out a hand. “Where’s the fire?”
The woman gave me a haughty look. “Fire? There is no fire,” she told me with an accent that I placed as Russian, even from my limited experience.
“Is there something we can help you with officers?” the man intervened. “We
have an appointment, you see and we mustn’t be late.”
“You’re not going anywhere except back inside. I waved toward the door.”
“You’ve no cause to hold us,” he tried again.
“I have probable cause and that’s all I need.”
Just as those words finished spilling out, shouting arose from the back of the house. I herded the two of them inside and ordered Mason and Dana to hold them then I bolted back out the way I’d entered and charged around behind the house.
My deputies had chased a man matching the description of the WIC man as he tried to escape from a back door with a box load of paperwork. He missed the edge of a pond that was iced over and still covered in a light layer of snow, broke through and fell in. By the time I got to the pond, they’d hauled him out of the freezing water and were in the process of performing an arrest.
Once everyone was inside and our pond guy was wrapped in a couple of blankets, I took a look around. The guy that got dunked was a pretty good likeness for the sketch the artist did from the recollection of Annmarie Beatty. We really had something there. My deputy handed over that guy’s wallet. I looked at his driver’s license, shook my head and then handed it to Dana who glanced at it and quickly stifled a smirk.
The woman in the room matched the description Dana had given me the night before. She was, in turn, staring daggers through Dana. It was enough for me. I looked at my wife. “Start talking Rossi. Everything you know; out in the open, now.”
Dana stepped forward and eyed the three people arrayed in front of all of the rest of us. “Katie Hershberger moved into a house on Putnam Avenue in Zanesville late this past summer with four friends. She was young, naive and from a culture very deferential to men. She’d been raped by one of her own and, at 17, she was several months pregnant, as a result. She was approached by Mr. Bakula here,” she pointed at Drago, the runner, “most likely in a park near the house where she was staying, about giving her baby up for adoption. Being the gentle, kind and deferential soul that Katie was, she listened an even took a business card from him. This card.” Dana fished one out of her coat pocket.
“The card led me to the adoption agency run by these two. They’re Vasily and Lucetra Arnoff; Russian immigrants who naturalized in the 1970s. The agency is legitimate some of the time and a front for black market adoptions the rest of the time, only the potential parents don’t know that.”
“She’s out of her mind,” the male Arnoff said. “You have no proof of any such thing. I demand that you release us at once.”
“On the contrary Mr. Arnoff. We have this card, we have three boxes of files, at least, an eye witness who can ID Mr. Bakula and we have the other Mr. Bakula, Roman, the one you’re trying to get into Riverside Hospital so you can steal identities from stillborn babies and other infant deaths from their systems. Finally, there’s another witness who can ID both of them as being the men who kidnapped Jef Hershberger.”
“Jef Who?” Lucetra asked.
“The baby they took from my sister’s home that Katie Hershberger gave birth to less than three weeks ago now,” I said. “Where is he?”
“We don’t know what you’re talking about,” the woman sniffed. We don’t have a baby in our custody right now nor do we have any babies we expect to be born in the next 24 hours or more, all to legitimate clients of the agency. All of our clients are completely legitimate.”
Vasily added, “We’d lose our licensing if there was ever any question about any of our placements.”
“Funny,” I reminded them, “you’re out here attempting to destroy files for one thing and, second, we’re right next to the Amish farm where Katie was found dead. A strange coincidence, don’t you think?”
Vasily shrugged. “I feel for the poor child but it means nothing to us. Our neighbors are Amish. They keep to themselves and so do we. We know nothing of that.”
“Are you saying you live here?” Janet asked.
“No, they don’t live here,” Dana said. “They live in Bexley. This is some sort of safe house. I mean, just look around.”
She had a point. The place was even more sparsely furnished than an actual Amish home would be.
“We’ve done nothing wrong. If you’re going to search here, you need a warrant.”
“Why does it matter if you’ve done nothing wrong?” I asked him. “I can search since I have probable cause to believe there’s a minor child – an infant – here whose life is in immediate danger.”
I had my deputies place the three of them under arrest. Mason, Dana and I conducted a search of the house.
There was no nursery there and nothing to indicate a child had ever been there, not at first. I called for a forensics team to come and dust the place down and pick it apart but we didn’t even need to wait that long.
Drago Bakula, still shivering from his dunking, started sneezing uncontrollably. One of my deputies grabbed a roll of paper towels for him from out of the kitchen, the only sort of thing around that he could wipe his nose on. He happened to look in the trash can when he was in the kitchen, something I had personally failed to do on a quick pass through the room looking for signs of Jef or other infants. Inside it he saw two unopened and unexpired cans of powdered baby formula, giving them all away but making me, Janet and Dana sure we got there too late and Jef was gone.
I held a can up to the three of them. “Where is he?” I demanded. “You were obviously prepared for him to be here at some point.”
The two men refused to answer at all. Lucetra couldn’t help herself, claiming, “We don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
Dana zeroed in on the wet and shivering Drago, asking, “Why’d you kill Katie? How many more young women have you killed?” He clucked his tongue at her but otherwise continued to refuse to answer.
I called in the FBI. I pulled aside the team leader who’d been working the Hershberger case, Rudy Gear, when he and his team showed up on site just over an hour later and gave him the lowdown.
“Katie Hershberger’s body was found by the Amish farmer that owns the next property over, Isaac Byler. The people I’m holding inside appear to be running an illegal adoption ring and this house appears to be a safe house they use from time to time. Jef isn’t on site but I have reason to believe he hasn’t been placed yet and is being held nearby.”
Something dawned on me, right at that moment. Before he could say a word, I held up both hands and told him, “And, you might start next door with the Bylers. I just remembered, they take care of ‘English’ babies over there.”
“English?”
“As in, not Amish. That’s what the Amish call all non-Amish, English speaking Americans.”
“Got it,” he nodded.
He immediately set his team about confiscating the records in the car and the box my deputies had brought back into the house and had a couple start going through the house. He and a woman on his team went personally to the Amish farmhouse that was a couple of acres’ distance away.
An hour or so later, they came back armed with sworn statements from the Amish farmer’s wife and their daughter who cared for the child and, most importantly, with Jef.
Rudy told me he planned to seek no charges against the Amish family as they legitimately appeared to have no knowledge of the illegal nature of some of what the Arnoffs did and they surrendered Jef willingly with full instructions for his care to the female agent who was a mother three times over herself.
Dana was still on the scene when the county social services office was called in. The FBI agent and the case worker she was transferring Jef to let us both hold him briefly and say goodbye to him before they took him. My wife was crushed and crying after that and I broke all sense of official protocol to hold her and try to console her.
My breaking heart shattered when she sobbed into my ear, “I don’t know what I’m going to tell Hannah.”
Chapter 32 – Young International
Dana
Sunday morning, February
22nd
“Roman Bakula and Drago Bakula are cousins, Russ. Drago is the muscle for an illegal adoption ring run by their uncle, Vasily Arnoff. It looks like Roman gets pulled in from time to time to help do some of the dirty work of obtaining healthy, white, male infants.”
“Ouch! So, criminal charges are going to be filed?”
“That’s only half of it. A little birdie found out the real reason why Roman wanted to go to Riverside...or at least why his Uncle wanted him there.”
“You don’t think he was going to try and steal babies right out of the hospital do you?”
“I think that some version of that may have been part of a plan Arnoff and Drago were working up but they had something slightly more sinister in mind for Roman. My takeaway is that they were going to have him alter hospital records and create birth certificates to get legitimate paperwork for the kids they kidnapped.”
“Sounds like he’s going to jail if they can make any of that stick.”
“He’s cooperating fully with the authorities but he’s been identified in a line up and it’s likely he’ll be facing either criminal charges or deportation for his part in the kidnapping. The rest will be harder to prove unless he cops to it.”
“That’s right, ‘a little birdy’ dug most of the background up.” He laughed briefly and continued, “You’re damn good at this Dana. I really need to start throwing a lot more work your way.”
“Yeah, about that...”
“What? You don’t want it?”
“I can’t Russ. I enjoy it but anything but the computer and research work kills me. I’m talking to you from Mel’s easy chair with my left leg elevated and throbbing in pain because I refuse to take anything stronger than what you can buy over the counter. The boots on the ground work is just not for me anymore.”
“What will you do then?”
“Technically, I’m medically retired and I got a nice settlement to boot. I don’t have to do anything. I was trying to write but I kept getting stuck. I think I was trying to write the wrong things.”