Noah's Rainy Day

by Sandra Brannan

  Gates looked at his watch and calculated. “It’s 5:45 p.m. now and the boy’s been missing since somewhere between 12:40 p.m. and 1:55 p.m., four or five hours ago.”

  The silence that followed was heavy. Gates knew that a four or five hour jump on the police was a huge advantage for whoever had abducted the child.

  “Why wasn’t this reported by BlueSky hours ago?”

  “They said this was news to them. The gate agent said the system clearly showed they hadn’t checked in so it wasn’t her fault. The BlueSky brass claims they don’t check the records of those not checking in for a flight until day’s end. They found out when the parents called. An hour ago. The employee escorting the kid never reported it.”

  “Who the hell is this loser?”

  “Guy’s name is Kevin Benson. He’s a Denver-based BlueSky employee.”

  “Where is Benson now?” Gates growled.

  “No one seems to know. No one has seen him since he got off the plane in Denver with the boy.”

  Gates exchanged a glance with Pierce, who stood with his arms folded across his broad chest, the muscles in his arms bulging against the fabric of his button-down shirt. Although Streeter’s white hair and worried eyes aged him, his rugged features and fit body made him look as if he’d just tackled the Crucible in boot camp at Parris Island. Ever the Marine, Gates thought.

  Streeter’s eyebrow arched, which is exactly how Gates felt. Curious. Suspicious.

  “We have to find him. Now,” Gates said.

  “BlueSky said they’re doing everything they can to locate him.”

  “And the parents?” Gates asked.

  “Like I said, they’re the ones who contacted the airline. BlueSky didn’t even know the escort hadn’t made it back on the plane at Denver until the father called. Then they checked the system—a no-show, for both, on any flights out of Denver. Said the father was irate. Threatened to sue, threatened to have people’s jobs. Apparently, he’s some big shot from Manhattan who can make good on his threats. All I can tell you is that it has made our job even tougher. The BlueSky group is completely lawyered up.”

  “It just keeps getting worse. When did the call come in, Eddie?”

  “A few minutes ago. Literally.”

  Gates looked at the clock hanging on the wall in his kitchen that read 5:46 p.m. Christmas Eve dinner—the one his wife had been planning for weeks and that he would surely have to miss—was scheduled to be served at 6:00 p.m. Yet he knew his wife would understand that it was more important for him to do everything he could to make sure the young boy had a chance to enjoy a holiday meal in the future with his family. Gates felt his friend’s eyes studying him and his worry became focused.

  His deputy said, “The kid was supposed to arrive at LAX an hour and a half ago—4:20 p.m. our time. When they got the call from the father forty-five minutes, an hour ago, BlueSky tried locating the escort and decided to call the police when they couldn’t.”

  “What took them so long to call us? We’ve lost so much precious time on this already.”

  “My sense of this? BlueSky is doing nothing but ass-covering,” the deputy answered.

  “Which means we need to get people out to the airport. Pronto. Who else knows?” Gates shot a look at Streeter, who nodded.

  “Just you, Chief. And dispatch. They called me and I called you. What do you want me to do?”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Downtown. At the station.”

  “Round up a dozen and head to the airport. I’m on my way too, so don’t do anything until I get there. Alert anyone we’ve got working out there about the situation. Get an APB and Amber Alert out ASAP. I’ll bring the FBI into this immediately and they’ll have someone out there with me. We should be there within fifteen minutes.”

  “Geez, Chief. You’re taking this serious.”

  “He’s five. This is serious. Deadly serious.”

  “I know, I know. I’m just saying—”

  “You tell the BlueSky brass to get their asses out to DIA and meet us as soon as possible. We need some answers. Now.”

  “Might be hard, being Christmas Eve and all.”

  Gates ended the call and stared at his friend, worried about dragging Streeter Pierce into yet another high-profile case. They’d been together on so many of these emotionally charged cases over the years. And they’d solved nearly all of them, sometimes with not so happy endings. Like the case involving Streeter’s wife, Paula. A horrible story.

  Gates couldn’t imagine a more tragic set of circumstances, unable to comprehend what he’d do if something so gruesome had happened to his beloved Lenora. He stared at her through the kitchen window, catching her eye. She was carving a ham and stopped midslice. And the outer edges of her eyes sagged, and the sad smile on her beautiful lips assured him she understood. He must go. And she knew that. Without a word, their silent exchange spoke volumes. Work. It was always work. But she supported him because it supported them. And of course, she knew he loved his work.

  Gates offered his wife a smile in return.

  “Want to join me, friend?” Gates said, stepping off the porch to walk around the house to his car.

  “Let’s roll. Aren’t you going to tell Lenora?”

  “I just did.”

  “Of course.”

  The sun was low behind the Rocky Mountains as the two men walked through the snow. Gates chastised himself for not finding the time this week to shovel the sidewalks in the backyard, worried Lenora would feel compelled to shovel the walks herself tomorrow morning before the kids woke up for Christmas, a moment he already sensed he’d miss entirely. Somberly, he led Streeter through the wooden gate to the front.

  Gates’s oldest boy bolted out the front door, looking exactly as he had at fourteen. His son was his duplicate—strong, lean, gangly limbed, with short hair, dark skin, and black eyes filled with wonder and worry.

  The teen said, “Dinner is almost on the table.”

  Gates nodded at the boy, saying, “And make sure you tell your mother how good it is.”

  “Dad, it’s Christmas Eve.” The disappointment in his son’s eyes was unmistakable.

  “Which means you will lead the dinner prayer, son. You’re the man of the house.” Lenora came through the front door and stood beside her son, her demeanor stoic.

  His son’s eyes grew sadder than Lenora’s. And his smile, although shaky, was meant to be reassuring and supportive. “Okay, Dad. Come home soon or Boyd will have picked the ham bone clean.”

  Gates smiled. “Love you, Robbie.”

  “Love you, too.” And the teen ducked back inside, swiping at his eyes with the back of his hand.

  Gates stepped onto the front porch and kissed his wife. “A missing boy. From the airport. He’s five.”

  “You need to find him. And bring him home to his mama,” she said, a tear sliding down her brown cheek.

  Gates wiped it away with his thumb. “I’m sorry, dear.”

  She nodded and turned back to go inside without another word.

  Gates stood a moment staring at the closed door, wondering when he’d ever find a life of peace. As if falling back into formation after being called up by a general, Gates took a step back and spun abruptly on his toes, fists at his side, shoulders back, and he walked crisply toward Streeter as if prepared for battle.

  Before Streeter went to his truck, he said to Gates, “The boy needs us.”

  Gates nodded, appreciating his friend’s reassurance that he was doing the right thing by leaving his family on Christmas Eve. But as always, he used humor to mask his sorrow. “I hate involving you guys. You’re always so pushy and demanding, always standing in the shadows until it’s time to take the bows. Probably don’t have much of a choice, though, considering the child might have been taken on another flight across state lines.”

  “Consider us the dynamic duo. Local police and the feds.”

  Gates heard Streeter’s cell phone buzzing. Before answering, Streeter
offered Gates a sad smile. Gates recognized the expression on his friend’s face, a sign that Streeter didn’t think this case would have a happy ending. And Gates couldn’t argue with his intuition. Missing children cases rarely did.

  “And on Christmas Eve. Damn it, anyway.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “WE TOLD YOU, WE don’t know where he is. What do you want us to say?” BlueSky regional manager Toby Freytag asked. “And I’m not supposed to talk with anyone until the lawyers get here from Chicago.”

  Gates shot out of his chair in the manager’s small office. Streeter was quick to follow, if only to hold his friend back from pummeling this policy-spewing suit. Wiry, but with the deadly accuracy of a professional flyweight boxer, Gates stepped toward Freytag and leaned over the cheap desk, gripping the edges until his normally dark-skinned knuckles turned light brown.

  Freytag leaned back in his chair as Gates growled, “I don’t give a rat’s ass about what any lawyer said. What I want you to say is that you actually give a damn that a child’s missing. That you and your company were responsible for the child’s safety. That your missing employee, Kevin Benson, was responsible for escorting the boy from the New York City flight to his Los Angeles connection. That you are doing everything humanly possible to find Benson and the boy. That’s what I want you to say.”

  Streeter noticed the muscles in Gates’s neck bulge and ripple with every word. He hadn’t seen his friend this angry in years.

  “Chief Gates, we are working on it. I assure you,” said Freytag, his hands patting the air, perhaps in an effort to calm Gates’s anger. Or perhaps they were held up in defense as Freytag sensed how close Gates was to the edge.

  “Don’t you dare tell me you’re working on this when I know for a fact that you only arrived a few minutes before me, hours after the boy disappeared. No one seemed to care that the kid missed his flight to LAX, and airport pages for the escort to report aren’t enough. Neither was the feeble attempt to call his contact numbers. Someone should have screamed bloody murder hours ago that the boy was unaccounted for.”

  “But the gate check did,” Freytag insisted. “They flagged the passenger as a no-show, and like I told you, the procedures for a passenger missing the flight—”

  “I don’t give two shits about your procedures,” Gates spat, the dark lines on his forehead deepening between his furrowed black brows. “And this is a child, a little boy, not just any passenger who missed his flight. What the hell are you thinking? What’s wrong with your employees that they wouldn’t follow up on an unaccompanied minor, a child, who missed his scheduled flight?”

  “At the risk of angering you further, let me say, it happens all the time. You just don’t understand,” Freytag said, bracing himself for Gates’s fury.

  “Oh, I understand. You probably just didn’t want to be bothered on Christmas Eve. Right?”

  “I don’t get many holidays, Chief.”

  Gates took a step toward Freytag. Streeter put a hand on Gates’s shoulder and eased him back. Gates pointed a long finger at Freytag and warned, “You get Kevin Benson in here in the next half hour or I’ll tear this place apart looking for him, starting with your asshole.”

  Freytag blinked, glancing around his tiny space as if imagining what it would look like after Gates was through with it, trying not to picture the police chief climbing up his rectum, which Streeter knew Gates would do if it meant finding the boy.

  Streeter touched Gates’s elbow. Gates pointed menacingly at Freytag and repeated, “Half an hour.”

  Streeter followed Gates out of Freytag’s private office, through the BlueSky complex, and into the long hall that led to the down escalator and the main level of the terminal.

  The Jeppesen Terminal was an immense space with a ticketing area just inside the doors on either side, a multitude of commerce ringing the main terminal just below the halls of the upper level, and travelers herded to the center through security clearance just above the down escalators to the underground trains. Streeter observed the stores, restaurants, art galleries, coffee shops, and newsstands that encircled the security screening area one level down from Toby Freytag’s office and realized that the BlueSky office complex was situated directly above the ticketing counters. Then he noticed the other airlines’ arrangements were similar—office complexes were mostly above the ticketing areas, each probably having internal stairs for their employees to use. The doors to public transportation and to the mirror-image parking structures were just beyond the ticketing counters.

  Streeter saw that if a BlueSky employee wandered into an unsecured area of Jeppesen Terminal, no one would take notice of him, even if he had a child in tow. Hopefully, the cameras Streeter spotted hanging all over the walls had captured something.

  “We’re setting up headquarters on Concourse B on the level just above where the boy was supposed to board the plane to LAX. Gate B51.”

  “Where did he arrive?” Streeter asked.

  “Gate B31 was where the boy was last seen,” Gates said to Streeter as they walked toward security. “They said your guy is already there, pulling data for us.”

  “Must be Kelleher,” Streeter said.

  Gates nodded. “I have Eddie—the deputy who called me—and the other officers canvassing the BlueSky employees throughout the airport to find out who knows what and where everyone was earlier today. It’s been nearly six hours since the LaGuardia plane landed. That means many of the employees are probably off shift already. But Eddie will do what he can. Take names and numbers.”

  Streeter’s eyes never stopped moving. His gaze skipped from face to face, scanning the area and taking it all in: the lights, the barricades, the stores, the restaurants, the hordes of travelers, and the vast space. The infinite places a little boy could be hidden from view—multilevels; unmarked doors, some locked, some not; countless merchants; dozens and dozens of bathrooms; and far too many exits on either side of Jeppesen Terminal. It would be a daunting task to locate the child if he had decided to play hide-and-seek in this place.

  Streeter drew in a long breath and looked up at the steel structure supporting the peaks of white canvas overhead that emulated the snowcapped Rocky Mountains, and he could think of nothing but haystacks. Mumbling to himself, he said, “Like finding a needle.”

  As they bypassed the hundreds of travelers snaking through the roped-off lines and approached the police officers and TSA employees at security, Gates flipped open his badge, as did Streeter.

  One of the senior officers said, “Chief Gates, we just heard.”

  “Cheryl, how are you?”

  Streeter studied the police officer who reminded him of an adult version of Little Lotta the comic book character. The female officer was short and stout, had freckles spattered on her round face, and her blond hair, except for her bangs, was cropped at chin level.

  “Not so good. Knowing there’s been a boy missing for over five hours and we’re just now hearing about it? So much valuable time’s been lost.”

  “You’re telling me,” Gates said, looking at his watch.

  Streeter noted that it was approaching 6:30 p.m. and they had gotten very little out of BlueSky manager Freytag, who didn’t seem to know much at all.

  All the officers waited for Gates to say something. He studied each of their faces in the silence, looking each in the eyes and then moving on. Streeter knew his routine, knew Gates had to assess their involvement for himself. After a long moment, he introduced himself to each of the officers and asked Cheryl for an introduction to each of the TSA employees.

  He gathered as many of them as he could in the tiny glass-enclosed viewing room nearby and introduced Streeter. “Special Agent Streeter Pierce is with the FBI and is the regional expert on hostage negotiations.”

  Everyone mumbled a greeting, eyeing him. Streeter knew he was as approachable as a hungry pit bull—his shoulders were wide and bulky, his face as hard as Washington’s on Mt. Rushmore, and his voice sounded as if he’d swallowed bar
bed wire for breakfast, as Liv Bergen had once told him. He kept his eyes fixed on each face in front of him, sure to reveal nothing about himself other than his formidability.

  Gates added, “As Chief of the Denver Police, this is my investigation, which I fully intend to turn over to Special Agent Pierce and the FBI in short order, depending on the facts. But the first task is to find out what you all know, saw, or heard that might be out of the ordinary, particularly between noon and two, roughly. How many of you were on shift at that time?”

  Most of them raised their hands.

  One man called out, “Some of us started on the one o’clock shift.”

  Several nodded.

  “Then all of you will be important to this case. Chief Deputy Ed Heisinger, who you may have already met, will be taking your statements. We know it’s the holidays, but we have a child missing and we’d appreciate if you’d stick around until after Eddie and his team have had a chance to interview you and get your contact information.”

  “What about the earlier shift? Do you want their names?” another TSA agent asked.

  “Absolutely. Anything you can do to help us out. Here’s a photograph of the missing BlueSky employee, Kevin Benson, along with a snapshot of the missing boy. We’ve sent it out electronically to your official contacts. Print and forward copies to everyone you think needs to see these the second you get them. We’ve issued an APD on Benson and an Amber Alert on the boy. We have verified that a boy fitting his description passed through LaGuardia’s security and the boarding gate to the plane, which brought him here. And the BlueSky management team has assured us that they have spoken to the gate agent who witnessed the escort deplaning with the boy at gate 31 in Concourse B.”

  “Show us the picture,” one officer in the back shouted. “I never forget a face.”

  Gates passed back the photo of the boy with long, blond hair cropped in a pageboy haircut. “The boy’s five,” Gates shouted back. “The photo’s working its way back to you. But I’ll need it back.”