Gone Missing: A gripping crime thriller that will have you hooked

by T. J. Brearton

  Cross kept his hand out. “Please hand me your phone.”

  Calumet did.

  Cross looked at the picture again. Where was she? He looked for a sign but all he could see was Katie, the damage in her eyes.

  He’d forgotten about David, who suddenly snatched the phone away.

  David stared at the image of his wife. He mumbled something incoherent. People were keeping their distance because Katie’s husband simmered, about to boil over. No one moved.

  Then the big man seemed to age as his anger dissolved into visible despair. His gaze slowly traveled to Cross, then he held out the phone.

  Cross grabbed it and stepped away, searching for the call recorder app installed by Kim Yom. His mind raced in several directions and his stomach knotted.

  David wandered to the couch and sank into it. Beside him, Jean Calumet was rubbing a finger over his lips, dazed. The rest of them stood around like onlookers at the scene of a brutal accident.

  “Everybody out.” It was blunt, but Cross stared them down and people got moving.

  Sheriff Oesch rallied his deputies. The troopers filed toward the door.

  “No one says a word,” Cross said. “Not to a single member of the press, not to a wife or a friend, got it?”

  Cross stopped Farrington from leaving. He wanted one state trooper on hand and Farrington had been there from the beginning.

  Just like that, no consultation with Cross or Gates, Calumet had agreed to pay a ransom. It was Calumet’s daughter and he’d already said he’d do whatever it took, but Cross had familiarized him with the procedure, and this was not the way things should go.

  “How did they get your number?” Cross glared at Calumet, who still looked shell-shocked.

  Sybil answered, her tone curt. “We don’t know, Mr. Cross. But who did you expect them to call?”

  “Maybe the info hotline we provided at the press conference. Maybe the New York State police. Maybe me.”

  “It’s our daughter. Of course they would call us.”

  * * *

  With everyone gone but the family and the core law enforcement, Cross and Gates shut themselves in the dining room, closing the door on Jean Calumet, who stood in the center of the living room like a statue, and Sybil, who’d come over icy cool now that the episode had passed.

  Kim Yom, the phone and computer specialist, had set up her work station on the large, elegant table that dominated the room.

  The app recorded all incoming calls on Calumet’s phone to a Google Voice account. Calumet had agreed with the stipulation he be allowed to immediately delete any recordings not related to his daughter’s kidnapping.

  Yom accessed and replayed the phone call.

  From the computer speakers: “Hello?”

  “Is this Katie’s father?”

  “Yes. I’m Jean Calumet. Don’t hurt her.”

  “Alright, Katie’s father. I want you to listen very close, and you can have her back. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “I’m going to call you back in one hour with two different account numbers. You’re going to wire $5 million to one account, $5 million to another. Once they’ve both gone through, I’ll give you coordinates where you can then locate Katie. Are we clear?”

  “Okay. Yes. It will be done.”

  The caller hung up. He’d been even and smooth, not a trace of nerves. Definitely a male, thirties or forties by the sound of his voice. A slight accent – maybe Jersey or Brooklyn?

  Cross picked up Calumet’s phone and dialed *57. He followed the prompts for tracing the call and listened.

  “The last call to your telephone cannot be traced so no charge will be added to your bill. If the problem continues, call CenturyLink for further assistance.”

  Cross spoke to Yom. “Could they modify the phone so that call trace doesn’t work?”

  “Well, easier to just buy a prepaid. For around thirty bucks, you can obtain an anonymous dial tone. It’s called an MVNO. No name required. No I.D. check, no billing information, no questions asked. You just walk into Walmart and walk out with a working phone line that’s virtually impossible to trace.”

  “Virtually impossible,” Gates said.

  Kim Yom started to say more, but Captain Bouchard arrived. He pushed his way through into the dining room, eyes wide. “They called?”

  Cross held up the phone. “We need the feds. We need a skiptracer. Yeah, they called.”

  “The FBI is right behind me,” Bouchard said. “I got them. They’re coming in.”

  * * *

  FBI Agent Radu Sair gathered the family in the living room.

  “So, we’ve had first contact.” Sair glanced at his watch. “We have fifteen minutes until he calls back. When he does, we’re going to track him.”

  Jean Calumet spoke up. “I’ll have to keep him on the line?”

  “No. If the trace works, it’s nearly instantaneous.”

  Cross thought about Kim Yom saying how it was improbable to trace a prepaid phone.

  “You’re confident it’s going to work this time?” Cross asked. “What’s different?”

  Sair gave him an impatient look then called over his shoulder, “Agent Paulson?”

  Paulson emerged from the dining room, intent on the phone he was holding. He was the FBI skiptracer and had arrived minutes before with an impressive array of tech gear. He looked up, realized he was being asked to speak. “Ah, okay. So we’re using NPA/NXX data. I can at least determine the carrier.”

  Gates said, “Subpoenas will take weeks.”

  Paulson shook his head. “Your Dr. Yom is most certainly right – they’d be using a burner. Burners lease service from different cell carriers. Through NPA/NXX, we’ll know the brand. If it comes up as Verizon, Cingular, or T-Mobile, it’s a Tracfone. If it comes up Sprint or Nextel, it’s Boost Mobile.”

  “So we’ll get the brand?” Cross looked between the agents. “Then what? We go to every Walmart nationwide and look at the record of prepaid purchases, then watch their surveillance video?”

  Sair was impassive. “It goes quicker than you’d think.”

  “What about a stingray?”

  The agents traded looks. Sair stepped closer to Cross and lowered his voice. “Yes, we’ll be using cell tower simulators, too. We’ll be collecting cellular info in a general search. But the stingray has a limited range. We’ve got four ready to start trawling, but in no way does that cover the territory we need to cover.”

  Cross had a tough time swallowing it. This was the FBI’s plan? They could fly a spy plane over the entire region equipped with a stingray. He knew the technology was controversial and might drag Fourth Amendment concerns into the mix, but that hadn’t stopped the feds before.

  He held his tongue for now. Jean and Sybil Calumet were watching and listening closely; Gloria looked more dubious by the second, David downright anxious and depressed. He hadn’t moved from the couch since the call came in.

  Sair resumed his general address. “Okay, so, again – best-case scenario, the trace works and we get the number, the subscriber, the whole turkey. Second-best scenario, we learn the carrier, but if through NPA/NXX data we learn the carrier is servicing a burner phone, then we go after purchases. Only one in thirty cell phones are prepaids. If the phone was a recent purchase – even a couple months – we have the capability to parse that data very quickly.”

  “How will you know who to look for?” Jean Calumet asked.

  Sair turned to Cross and raised his eyebrows. His expression invited Cross to share his information with the family.

  “We’ve potentially identified one of the men involved,” Cross admitted. “His fingerprint was found in the minivan. It’s a partial print, and with partials it’s possible to mismatch. So I’ve been working to verify his identity in other ways.”

  David roused from his stupor. “Who is it?”

  Captain Bouchard cut Cross off. “We can’t discuss that at this time.”

 
Sair stuck his finger in the air. “People, it is very, very important that we get one thing straight: When the abductor calls back, we give him absolutely no indication that we have any idea about a suspect, that we are performing a trace, that we suspect a burner, absolutely nothing.”

  “I’m not stupid, Agent Sair,” Jean Calumet said. “So if we look at retail store video, what if it’s not this man who purchased the – you call it a burner?”

  “We have an exhaustive list of known associates,” Sair said.

  Cross had pulled Vickers’ rap sheet, and Vickers had no known associates. Unless the feds knew something he didn’t, it was a bald-faced lie.

  “Now,” Sair said, “the next thing: As soon as we have the account numbers, Agent Paulson will run a trace on those accounts. This isn’t easy – there are many privacy entanglements and firewalls. With luck, we’ll at least get the bank.”

  Calumet interjected again. “Can’t you submit a court order? I have the contact information of three judges in my phone. We’d get the owner of the bank accounts much sooner than the owner of the phone, wouldn’t we?”

  “Unless the abductors are foolish – and I hope they are – the accounts will be offshore. Probably Swiss. Look, this is not about any one smoking gun, people. This is about all these things working together. What phone are they using? We get that. What bank are they using? We get that. Who is one of the men involved? We already got that. All of this together, and we take down the bad guys.”

  Sair dropped his hands to his side. Cross thought there was a bit of theater to the agent’s spiel, but he was grateful for Sair and Paulson nevertheless.

  “Once this call happens in… six minutes,” Sair said, “we’re going to take off like a rocket.”

  Calumet said, “What if we just pay, get Katie’s location, and go get her?”

  “We’re going to,” Sair said. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do. Katie is our number one priority. Getting the bad guys is secondary. We won’t do anything to jeopardize her safety.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  She listened, grasping the hatchet, standing halfway between the cabin and the edge of woods, and heard the cry again.

  “Help me…!”

  It was another trick. Like the fake baby crying in the minivan, meant to lure her. Carson was some kind of perverted performer, playing a sick game.

  Or, maybe it was someone else. The cabin’s owner. What if he or she had had a confrontation with Carson?

  It could be anything, anyone. Even if it sounded like Carson, the environment might be distorting acoustics.

  Katie started away toward the woods. She was getting out of here.

  “Katie! Help!”

  She froze. There was no more question – he was calling her name. It had to be Carson. And he sounded hurt. If this was more of his cat-and-mouse routine, he was convincing.

  She’d seen an animal snare in the cabin. Maybe he’d stepped into one. Maybe his fucking leg had jagged metal teeth in it right now, he was bleeding out, and she could watch him die.

  Playing a game, not playing a game – she didn’t know. But he was definitely far enough away that she could redouble her search for the GPS. It might still be in the cabin somewhere and she’d been too panicked to find it before.

  She made her decision and sprint-skipped back into the cabin, hobbling on her bad leg.

  But his voice drifted over again, her name, followed by a pathetic wail.

  Maybe he has it. Something happened to him; he’s hurt.

  Go get it.

  She considered it. Had he clipped the GPS to his belt at some point?

  She could have a look. Just a look. It really could mean the difference between success and failure, life and death. For starters, she could determine where the hell she was. That alone would be a huge psychological relief. And, earlier, she’d been confident she could make it out on her own, thinking that being lost in the woods was better than anything else, but now she was in pain, even more exhausted, emotionally wrecked, and barely able to use both hands.

  She stopped, scanned the clearing, the trees, listening intently. Waited.

  Carson’s voice, weaker: “Katie, pleaaase.”

  She moved toward it, where the land dropped away and overlooked the treetops. The closer she got, the sheerer the drop revealed.

  She lowered to her knees on the jaunty precipice, crawled to the edge, and looked down.

  Carson was on the rocks below, his body mangled. Blood spatter surrounded him in a way that reminded her of a raspberry smoothie dropped from a high angle.

  A few feet away from where he’d fallen: the bright-orange GPS.

  The whole thing made her stomach roll, and needles of heat pricked her neck and ears. It wasn’t the gore. It was just the sight of him, triggering a fresh wave of revulsion. For him, for herself, for all of it. A desire to turn back time. To have left last night instead of succumbing to fear and so-called better judgment.

  Where had the judgment gotten her? Almost killed.

  On the other hand, if she’d run, he would have surely chased her. She’d stayed, and look what happened.

  He saw her.

  “Katie! Help me!”

  His voice was hoarse from all the yelling he’d already done.

  She tried to shake off the mix of emotions roiling through her and get her bearings. She already knew they had done a good deal of climbing, but this was a substantially high elevation.

  The mountain was part of a chain curving toward the sun, so, the south. The summits and ridges were unfamiliar to her. The High Peaks were busy with hikers all summer long, loaded with trails, surrounded by villages, but these were not the High Peaks. As she scanned for any signs of life – a winding road in the distance, a farmer’s field – there was nothing to see but the timberline forest undulating into the distance, the crescent shape of the massif bent toward the southern sky. She didn’t recognize any of it.

  “Katieeeeee…!”

  Carson reached up at her from the craggy boulders below.

  She wanted that GPS. It looked intact – those things were encased in rubber, built to survive all sorts of trauma.

  He could suffer and die, for all she cared. And from the looks of his legs and one of his arms, it wouldn’t take long. Maybe he would bleed out, or maybe the animals would come for him in the night. Once he was dead, she’d take it.

  She moved away from the edge and Carson shrieked.

  Back at the cabin, she gathered up all the mountain-climbing rope and carabiners. One of the items from the duffel was a belt that mountain climbers use for rappelling. Now it made some sense why Carson had this gear – it was more than just ropes to tie her up. He’d planned an exit that would involve some steep descents.

  A drunken mountain climber. What a joke.

  Feeling confident, angry, and strangely bemused, she measured out the rope, feeding it through her hands. There was the twenty-foot length used to pull her along, and there was another shank about triple that. She’d been bouldering a few times; even if ropes weren’t used for bouldering, she had some basic chops when it came to footholds and handholds. But did she want to risk a fall with the poor shape she was in? And though the GPS had appeared intact, it could’ve been invisibly damaged, not functional, not worth it.

  She set the gear down and turned to the food items. She made herself a sandwich and chewed it up while staring at the hatchet she’d set aside. He was still yelling out there, just a faint sound, like a mewling animal in a trap.

  There was no telling how long it would take him to die. An hour. A day. Maybe waiting it out was not the best option.

  Her stomach clenched, threatening to bring up the food she’d swallowed. She sucked in a deep breath through her nostrils and willed it to stay down.

  Maybe there was another way to Carson. A longer way down, a more gradual descent. She hadn’t really given it a thorough scout. She could go now and see, bring the hatchet with her. If it proved too difficu
lt, or rappelling was the only way down, she’d abandon the effort.

  She grabbed the urn and a small towel from Carson’s things. She left the cabin again and went to the well.

  Working the pump handle, she filled the urn. Her wrists were still bleeding and there was more blood running from a cut on her leg. Katie bit back the tears and endured the pain while she cleaned herself. The water was frigid.

  Finished, she returned to the cabin. The first-aid kit was scrappy but there were a couple of alcohol swabs and a roll of gauze. She wrapped her wrists, grabbed the hatchet, then went back to the ledge and peered over.

  “Katie! Oh God, thank God. Katie… ahh! Katie, I broke my legs. My legs are fucking broken…”

  She investigated the area around the cliff. Moving up the ridge a ways, toward the peak of the mountain, she discovered a narrow switchback trail that hooked around toward the drop. It might take a while, and there could be hidden dangers, but she wouldn’t know unless she gave it a shot.

  “Katie!? Where you goin’?”

  You’re wasting time. Get out of here. You’ve got no one to chase you now – go!

  -I could be in the woods for days. Even a week.

  Everything she’d seen so far confirmed how deep she was within the Adirondack Park. While she couldn’t name the surrounding mountains, she was sure she was isolated by miles of rugged terrain.

  The most robust mountain climbing she’d ever taken, years before meeting David, was Dix Mountain. It had entailed hiking in, camping, and summiting the following afternoon. Two full days, and that was as a spry twenty-five-year-old equipped with all modern hiking amenities on a well-worn trail.

  Six million acres in the park, she reminded herself, half of which was state-run wilderness preserve. The numbers meant little until you were out there in person, then the scope of it was truly overwhelming. People went missing almost every day in the summer. It might as well have been Alaska.

  I’m getting the GPS.

  “My legs are fucking broke!” Carson’s voice reverberated through the trees, a lonely, broken sound.