Chickasaw County Captive

by Paula Graves

  “She’s fine,” Sam assured his niece, squeezing her hand.

  “Your father told us you remember the attack.” Kristen moved closer to the hospital bed.

  Cissy looked up at her. “I do.”

  Sam let go of Cissy’s hand. “Cissy, this is Detective Kristen Tandy of the Gossamer Ridge Police Department.”

  He could see from the shift in his niece’s expression that she recognized the name. But she didn’t say anything, just held out her hand to Kristen. “Nice to meet you.”

  “I’m very happy to finally meet you, too,” Kristen said with a smile. “This is Detective Foley. We’ve been investigating what happened to you. We picked up a suspect a couple of days ago-can you take a look at this picture?”

  Kristen pulled a photograph from her notebook and handed it to Cissy, who brought the photo closer to her face.

  Sam realized he was holding his breath. He let it go slowly, glancing from his niece to Kristen, whose expression was as tense as he felt.

  Cissy handed the photo back to Kristen, her expression apologetic. “I’m sorry, no. That’s not the guy.”

  Sam felt his chest contract into a painful knot. Kristen turned to look at him, her eyes bright with alarm.

  “Where’s Maddy?” she asked urgently.

  “At school,” Sam answered, his heart pounding.

  “I’ll drive,” she said, and hit the door at a jog.

  OUTSIDE TIME WAS MADDY’S favorite time of all. She liked coloring and singing and all the things she did with the teacher inside the school, but outside time was perfect. Just perfect.

  Sometimes the teachers played games with them. Miss Kathy was the best at kick ball, and she laughed a lot. Maddy liked to hear Miss Kathy’s laugh. It was a big, booming laugh, straight from her belly. Maddy sometimes tried to laugh just like that, although it came out kind of silly sounding. But that was okay. Daddy said it was okay to be silly sometimes.

  Thinking about Daddy made her think about this morning, when he’d told her that Miss Kristen was at work. Miss Kristen was a detective, Daddy said, and her work was Very Very Important. Maddy wondered what was important about being a detective. In fact, she wondered what a detective was, anyway.

  She only knew that she liked Miss Kristen. She liked how Miss Kristen didn’t try to treat her like a baby since she was a big girl now. She liked the sound of Miss Kristen’s voice. And she liked Miss Kristen’s smile, even though Miss Kristen didn’t smile nearly as much as Aunt Hannah or Grandmama. Maddy wondered why she didn’t smile as much. Maybe she needs a little girl to love, Maddy thought. Like me.

  Across the playground, a little girl screamed, and Maddy looked up with surprise. She saw Cassie Price jumping up and down shrieking, and a couple of the boys in her class had bent over to look at something in the grass.

  Maddy saw Miss Kathy and Miss Debbie hurry over to see what was going on. She started across the playground, too, but a big hand reached out and stopped her.

  She looked up and saw a tall man in a blue uniform standing just behind her. Her heart gave a little lurch of surprise.

  “There’s a snake over there,” he said. Maddy thought his voice sounded familiar. He looked familiar, too, but she didn’t know why. He had a big, bushy mustache and wore a pair of silvery sunglasses. She could see herself in the glasses, she realized with a little smile.

  “Come with me, Maddy. I’m taking you to your daddy.”

  Was he Daddy’s friend? He had a uniform sort of like her Uncle Aaron’s. Was he a policeman? “I’m not afraid of snakes,” she said. Aunt Hannah had taught her how to handle the little green snakes that played around Grandmama’s garden. She liked to feel their dry, scaly bodies wriggle through her fingers.

  “But that’s a poisonous snake,” the man said firmly, taking her hand. She saw he had her backpack in his other hand. She could see the ringed tail of Bandit, her stuffed raccoon, hanging out of the zippered pocket.

  The man saw her looking at the tail. He reached into the pocket and gave Bandit to her. She said thank you-Daddy said always say “please” and “thank you”-and hugged Bandit close, not liking the feel of the man’s big hand around hers.

  “Where’s my daddy?” she asked aloud.

  “He’s waiting for you inside my van.” The man pulled her toward the side gate of the playground fence. They had gone around the side of the school building, and Maddy couldn’t see the other kids on the playground anymore.

  The man opened the gate and gave her a little nudge to go through. He closed the gate behind them and pulled her hand.

  Maddy looked at the van parked at the end of the small parking lot. It was green and looked old. There were two windows up at the front but no windows in the side. She didn’t see Daddy inside.

  “Where’s my daddy?” she repeated, starting to feel scared.

  The man opened the door of the van, picked her up and put her inside. He didn’t even have a special seat for her, like Daddy did. Her legs dangled over the seat, and she felt hot tears on her cheeks.

  “Where’s my daddy?” she screamed, but the man had already closed the door. She saw him put something in her backpack and toss it into the bushes at the side of the building.

  Maddy tried to open the door of the van to run away-Daddy said when you got scared, it was okay to run and find a grown-up you trusted-but she couldn’t get it to open.

  The man in the uniform opened the front door and pulled himself into the seat behind the steering wheel. He spoke to her, his voice firm. “No crying, Maddy. You have to be a big girl now, okay?” He pulled a cap from the dashboard and put it on. Maddy’s eyes widened.

  Now she knew why the man in the uniform looked and sounded familiar. He was the bad man.

  The bad man who hurt Cissy.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sam clutched the cell phone more tightly as Kristen swerved around slow-moving traffic on I-59. He was on interminable hold, waiting for the preschool’s principal to come on the line. He’d made a call as soon as they got outside the hospital, but the principal had been out of the office and he’d had to leave a message. He’d spent the next twenty minutes certain that Jennifer Franks would return his call at any moment.

  When she didn’t, he called again. The principal still wasn’t in her office, but this time, he told the secretary that he wasn’t hanging up until he talked to her boss.

  “Still nothing?” Kristen asked, sounding as annoyed as he felt. “You’ve been on hold forever.”

  Just then, there was a click on the other end of the line and Jennifer Franks’s breathless voice greeted him. “So sorry, Mr. Cooper. We’ve had a bit of an uproar I’ve been trying to get under control.”

  Sam’s stomach twisted. “What kind of an uproar?”

  “One of the children found a rather large snake on the playground a little while ago. We’re still trying to find out whether or not it’s harmless, and several of the children are very upset. We’ve had to call some parents.”

  Sam tamped down his impatience. “I left a message with your secretary twenty minutes ago-I’m trying to locate Maddy. Did you get that message?”

  “No, I’m sorry-my secretary just told me. Maddy’s class was outside for recess when the snake incident happened, but Maddy wasn’t one of the children involved.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I assume she’s back in her classroom with her teacher.”

  “You assume?”

  Across the seat, Kristen muttered a profanity under her breath.

  “I’ll check right now. Hold on a moment.”

  “I’m on hold again,” Sam muttered.

  “For God’s sake!” Kristen jerked the wheel, taking the Impala around a slow-moving coal truck at breakneck speed. “How hard is it to find one four-year-old?”

  “Mr. Cooper?”

  The fear he heard in Jennifer Franks’s voice made Sam’s blood freeze. “Tell me you found her safe and sound,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.
We don’t know how it happened.”

  “What happened, damn it?”

  Kristen shot him a look full of unadulterated terror.

  “She didn’t return with the rest of her class after recess,” Jennifer answered, sounding sick. “We don’t know where she is.”

  “Get your security guards to start searching every inch of the grounds.”

  “I’ve already sent my assistant out to do just that. I don’t think we should panic yet, Mr. Cooper. It’s possible that she was there for the snake incident and ran away to hide because she was scared.”

  He wished he could believe that, but he knew that snakes didn’t scare Maddy. He’d actually had to give her a lesson on not touching snakes unless a grown-up was there to supervise, for fear she’d end up trying to befriend a ground rattler or one of the bigger copperheads that roamed the woods near the lake.

  “Please call me back with any news. I’m on my way.”

  “Should we contact the police?”

  “I’ll handle that,” Sam answered, ringing off only long enough to dial his brother-in-law’s cell phone number. A few moments later, Hannah’s husband answered. “Deputy Patterson.”

  “Riley, it’s Sam. Maddy’s missing from her preschool and I’m about thirty minutes out. I need you to go there and supervise the search if you can.”

  “Of course. What can you tell me?”

  He outlined for his brother-in-law what Jennifer Franks had told him. “You know Maddy-a snake wouldn’t have scared her away. I’m afraid the man who tried to take her before may have gotten to her this time.”

  “I thought Jefferson County had the guy in custody.”

  “They have Darryl Morris in custody-but Cissy just woke up from her coma. She said Morris definitely isn’t the guy who attacked her.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Riley growled. “Did she give you a description of who we are looking for?”

  “I left as soon as I heard Morris wasn’t the guy. Detective Foley with the GRPD is still there taking her statement. Right now, we’re just looking for Maddy.”

  “I’m about five minutes away from the preschool,” Riley said. “I’ll call you in a few.” He rang off.

  Sam snapped his cell phone shut. “This isn’t happening.”

  “This is my fault,” Kristen muttered, white-knuckling the steering wheel through the interstate traffic. “I knew in my gut Morris was too easy an answer, but I wanted to believe it was over.”

  “We all did,” Sam said firmly. The last thing Kristen needed to do was second-guess herself now, when she needed to focus. “Don’t kick yourself. The evidence was there. We just didn’t know there were missing pieces.”

  “Except Morris told us all along there was someone else involved,” Kristen said, her tone full of disgust. “I should have looked deeper.”

  “You will now.”

  She released a shaky breath, and for the first time Sam realized she was hovering on the edge of tears. “I’m so sorry, Sam. I never should have agreed to let Carl put me in charge of protecting Maddy. I knew it was a bad idea.”

  “If you’d still been with Maddy, she wouldn’t be missing,” Sam replied. “You wouldn’t have taken your eye off her for even a second. So stop blaming yourself. We all thought she was out of danger.” He touched her shoulder. “I need you with me on this. I need your focus. Tell me you can do that.”

  She spared him a quick look. “I can do that.”

  They had reached their exit on the Interstate. They’d be at the school in ten minutes. Sam tried to keep his mind away from worst-case scenarios. The snake might not have scared Maddy, but she’d shown a hearty self-protective streak over the past few days, hiding first from the kidnapper and then from her mother when she’d felt threatened by Norah’s careless comments.

  “Could she be hiding?” Kristen asked, her mind moving in tandem with his. “I know the snake wouldn’t have scared her, but maybe all the commotion spooked her?”

  “Maybe.” He was afraid to hope. His gut was telling him it wouldn’t be that easy. Not this time.

  Kristen killed the sirens about a block from the preschool. “The kids’ll be freaked out enough as it is.”

  He slanted a look at her, wondering how she could possibly believe she wasn’t mother material. Even with all the uncertainty about Maddy’s whereabouts, Kristen had enough presence of mind to worry about the other children.

  He hadn’t even given them a thought.

  Riley Patterson was waiting for them at the front of the school, easy to spot thanks to his signature pearl-gray Stetson, a legacy of his native Wyoming. Sam could tell by the look on his brother-in-law’s face that the news wasn’t good.

  “We’ve found her backpack in the bushes near the side gate.” Riley’s voice was tight. “And one of the security guards is missing.”

  “Missing?” Sam frowned at Riley. “You think someone got rid of him to get to Maddy?”

  “We’re not sure,” Riley said. “There’s no sign of a struggle, no blood or anything like that-”

  “Where’s the backpack?” Kristen asked. She’d already pulled on a pair of latex gloves.

  Riley gestured for them to follow. “I wanted to wait until you got here to take a look at it. You’d know what’s missing, if anything.” He led them around the side of the building, where a yellow barrier tape flapped lazily in the warm midday breeze. A handful of people from the neighborhood had gathered outside the fence, watching curiously as Sam, Kristen and Riley approached the backpack lying on its side near the bushes.

  Sam felt moisture burning his eyes as he saw Maddy’s name written in faded denim letters stitched to the side of the backpack. Hannah had made those letters for Maddy out of a pair of old jeans and let Maddy help her stitch them to the bag.

  His whole family had pitched in when he returned home to Alabama with his little girl, knowing how much harder her life was going to be without a mother there for her full-time. If something had happened to his baby-

  Kristen’s warm hand slipped into his. He looked down at her and found her gazing up at him with scared blue eyes. But her jaw was squared and mingled with the fear was a bracing double shot of determination.

  “Focus on the evidence,” she said. “You packed the bag for her this morning, right? Tell me if something’s missing.”

  He squeezed her hand, grateful for her calming presence. He hunkered down with her as she crouched beside the backpack, watching her carefully open the bag to look inside.

  “Bandit’s missing,” he said aloud, noticing the stuffed raccoon’s absence immediately. Maddy’s favorite toy had taken up most of the space in the bag.

  “Her stuffed raccoon,” Kristen explained when Riley gave Sam a querying look. “She’s very attached.” She pulled the zipper down farther. There was a small gold change purse inside-empty, since Maddy had no concept of money. She only liked the little purse because of its shiny color.

  Kristen picked up the purse, looking at it, her eyes damp. Sam put his hand on her back, and she shot him a grateful look. Putting the purse down, she opened one of the outside pockets. “Commander Patterson, do you have tweezers or something like that?”

  “What is it?” Sam asked as Riley reached into his pocket and brought out a slim, leather-bound tool kit.

  “It looks like a piece of paper.” Kristen took the tweezers Riley gave her and reached into the zippered pocket to withdraw a small piece of paper folded into four sections. Using the tweezers and the very tip of her gloved finger, she nudged the paper open.

  There was writing inside, blocky letters just like the ones Sam had found on the back of the photos Darryl Morris had delivered to the D.A.’s office.

  “‘Let’s make a deal,’” Kristen read aloud, her voice shaking. “‘Your life for hers.’”

  Riley muttered a soft string of curses.

  “What kind of sick game is this guy playing?” Kristen dropped the note into the clear plastic bag Riley had produced from his jacket poc
ket and started going through the other pockets with greater urgency, as if hoping she’d find something that would contradict the message she’d just discovered.

  “I don’t think it’s a game,” Sam said thoughtfully, his initial fear beginning to subside. At least he could be pretty sure his daughter was still alive, if the man was talking about a trade. The fact that Bandit was missing also gave him hope; only someone who cared about Maddy’s emotional state would have bothered dragging the stuffed toy along with them.

  Whoever had taken Maddy wanted her alive, as a pawn in his game, not as a victim. It wasn’t great news, but Sam would take it. It was a hell of a lot better than finding his daughter’s body under the bushes instead.

  Riley put his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “I’m going to call this in and get a few more deputies down here. I’ll see if the DEA can spare Aaron, too.”

  Sam stood and shook Riley’s hand. “Thanks, man. Call Hannah, too. She needs to let the rest of the family know what’s going on.”

  As Riley went to make the radio call, Sam turned to Kristen. “Was there anything else in the backpack?”

  Kristen shook her head. “That was it.”

  “So he’s going to find a way to get in touch with me.”

  Kristen pulled her gloves off and planted herself in front of him. “You’re not making a trade, Sam.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  She moved even closer, her gaze locked with his. “If you try to make the deal, you’re just playing his game.”

  “It’s the only game in town, Kristen.” He laid his hands on her shoulders, running his thumbs gently over the curve of her collarbone. “I will do anything for my daughter. Including die for her, if it comes to that.”

  “I know that. But we can’t be stupid about this.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” He felt some of his control begin to slip. “That man has my daughter. He holds all the cards here. We’re practically at square one now that Cissy’s eliminated Morris as a suspect.”

  “No, we’re not.” Kristen closed her hands over his, her fingers warm and strong. “Cissy is giving Foley a description as we speak. And, you know, Darryl Morris may have been telling the truth about his accomplice. We may be able to get more information from him.”