by William Mark
Mason turned to walk back to the restaurant and pick up his food.
“Sir?” the clerk called out stopping Mason.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Don’t you need to check on the other employees she was with?”
Mason smiled at the shift in luck he was being given but maintained the persona of the travel auditor from Vanderhill Incorporated.
“Of course I do.”
Chapter 30
For the last three years, Curt had routinely fantasized about having the opportunity to inflict as much pain as possible on the person responsible for taking his son. However, when he was finally in the middle of that reality, he lacked direction. His initial plan of hostile interrogation hadn’t worked. Gregory wasn’t talking. He had to move on to plan B.
Curt set the bait and was waiting to spring the trap. He had to proceed with the utmost caution because too much was at stake.
He drove the Crown Vic down the main streets of Valdosta, trying to get a bearing on where he was and familiarizing himself with the area. While circling the area, he checked his rear view mirror for anyone following or driving too closely that could possibly figure him out.
The sun hung low as dusk neared, and the small rush hour created congestion on the main highways making it easy for Curt to blend in. He pulled off into a large shopping complex and found a parking spot furthest away from the store and out of earshot.
He pulled out the cell phone and checked it…no response yet.
“C’mon dammit, write back,” he said out loud. He watched closely as a vehicle followed him into the parking lot and drove slowly past him. He remained still in the parked car, hoping he would remain unnoticed by the passerby. As the car moved on, Curt noticed he was holding his breath.
He checked the cell phone again. Nothing.
Thump, thump.
Curt looked back through the rearview mirror but didn’t move at the odd sound. He heard a dull, muffled voice straining to say something. The noise annoyed him more than it concerned him, but he scanned the area for anyone close enough to hear. It was clear. He found a small nook created by some hedges and a closed business that offered the much needed privacy, so he backed the Crown Vic into the spot next the tall hedges.
Thump, thump, thump.
Curt ignored the noise and sat waiting.
***
Glenn Gregory slowly regained consciousness while Curt implemented plan A. He struggled against the handcuffs that were cinched tight around his wrists. He looked down and noticed the restraints around his ankles. The shackles kept him strapped into a chair situated in the middle of the kitchen and a prisoner in his own home. He was still dazed from the blow he took to the head and needed a minute to figure out what was going on.
Glenn was a pitiful sight as Curt watched, but he had no compassion for the man. Dried blood streaked down his face where the butt of Curt’s gun violently met the boney end of Gregory’s left cheek.
Once Gregory became aware of his surroundings, Curt stepped up to him and bent at the waist, meeting him eye to eye. He held his stare, hoping the man could read the unadulterated hate glaring in his eyes. Curt wanted to make it clear to Gregory that nothing was going to stand in the way of his finding his son. Curt’s nostrils flared and his jaw clenched as he conveyed non-verbally that he was willing to bury him if necessary.
Gregory looked back into the blackness of his eyes. Fear gripped him like a vise and squeezed to the point he was about lose control of his bowels. His only reaction was to scream.
Curt anticipated the man yelling for help, so after the shriek let loose, he stuffed Gregory’s mouth with a folded pair of socks. They were the dirty ones he’d found on the floor in Josh’s bedroom. It stifled the noise, and before he could spit out the socks, Curt followed up with a strip of duct tape across his mouth to hold them in place.
Gregory’s eyes bulged with fear, and he stopped screaming. A new level of panic set in.
“They can’t hear you. No one is coming to help you.” Curt’s tone was minimal and calm, very matter of fact.
The man shook his head back and forth in a futile attempt to loosen the sock and tape gag, but Curt had been unforgiving and merciless as he sealed the tape tightly across Gregory’s mouth. His eyes started to roll back in his head as his gag reflex took over. Curt didn’t care if the man suffered, but he needed him alive for now. He couldn’t afford for him to choke on his own vomit and die before he had the location of his son. He watched for just a moment longer to see if he could manage. When the dry heaving started, Curt knew the play was over and he ripped off the tape and sock gag, letting the man gasp for air.
He coughed and spit while he sucked air back into his lungs.
“Yell again, and I’ll put it back on and walk out that door.”
Gregory looked back at him and nodded in agreement.
“You know why I am here, so don’t bullshit me. You tell me where my son is, and you get to walk out of here. If not, you’ll be carried out in a body bag.” Curt remained within inches of the kidnapper’s face.
Gregory smiled and chucked a defeated laugh. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, or you won’t tell me?” Curt stood up and stepped back to the counter.
“I don’t know…and I won’t tell you.”
Curt grabbed a kitchen towel from the counter and began to wrap it tightly around his right hand.
“You know, I was hoping you would say that.” Curt jumped violently at the man and brought his fist crashing down against the top of his already injured left cheek bone, ripping open the freshly clotted wound. Blood started to ooze past the already dried blood as Gregory nearly fainted again from the powerful blow.
Curt pushed his head back up to face him again. He bent down to look him in the eye and hold his stare. Gregory remained defiant. Without any follow up questions or warning, Curt reared back and punched Gregory square in the nose, knocking his head back and lifting the front two legs of his chair a few inches off the ground. The chair rocked back down as more blood began to drain from his nostrils. Gregory gagged and spit blood as it began to flow down the back of his throat.
“Tell me.”
“I can’t.” Gregory was gargling blood and saliva.
“Tell me! Where is he?”
Gregory closed his eyes, and tears rolled out and down his bloody cheek.
“Tell me, and I’ll stop, GOD DAMN you!”
“I don’t know. I can’t….”
“Fine. I’m not leaving without answers.”
Curt stepped back to the counter and pulled out a small plastic bottle of industrial glue. He poured it onto a plate until it was empty. Next, he found where Gregory kept his glassware and took one out of the cabinet. He wrapped the empty glass in another towel and smashed it with a rolling pin. The glass shards crunched against the countertop as Curt smoothed the glass with the rolling pin. After a few extra rolls and crunching the glass into tiny, crushed shards, he opened the towel. He took his right hand, still tightly wrapped with the first towel, dipped it in the glue, knuckles first, and then into the ground up glass. He turned and stared at Gregory while the glue hardened.
“I saw this in a movie once. I’m pretty sure it’s going to hurt like hell.”
Gregory looked away, whimpering as he bled.
Curt took a deep breath. He managed to find a calm voice to continue questioning Gregory.
“I found his jacket and clothes in your apartment. I have video of you with him at the mall in Tallahassee, and a witness got your tag. I know you have him or you know where he is, so just tell me.”
Gregory looked at Curt’s right hand and began to panic. He wanted to scream but stopped at the thought of the gag being stuffed back in his mouth. He couldn’t take the suffocation again; it was worse than death. He sobbed at what fate had brought him and looked up at the man in the trench coat with a pleading look for sympathy, hoping to find an ounce of mercy.
When it came to wh
o took his son, there would be no mercy. It was clear Gregory wasn’t going to answer, so Curt stepped forward and punched Gregory in the same spot on his cheek over and over with precision. He wanted the glass fragments to embed deep into his skin with each strike causing a hellish pain to his face. As he delivered the strikes again and again, Gregory tried to avoid them by wrenching his neck around and moving his head side to side. Curt simply pulled him back into range and let loose another vicious punch.
Curt furiously threw punch after punch, but the man did not reveal where Josh was and absorbed the torture. He could feel the bones on the left side of his face crunch and pulverize further with each blow. Curt started to punch with his uncovered left hand to add to the damage and he quickly grew tired and exhausted.
“JUST TELL ME WHERE HE IS!”
After the onslaught of punches, strikes, and wild haymakers, Curt stepped back, exhausted by the beating he gave Gregory. He hadn’t noticed that he sat cuffed to the chair, limp and unconscious with his head bowed down to his chest. He stepped back and looked at himself. He was covered in blood because it had sprayed off his torture victim with each violent blow. The tile floor beneath him looked like it had rained blood, and he noticed his foot prints were in it. He stepped back and leaned against the counter to collect himself. He needed to change tactics. He needed a plan B.
***
While Gregory sat lifeless in the kitchen, Curt moved around the house, looking desperately for any information or lead on Josh’s whereabouts. He tore Gregory’s room apart, searching for any shred of information, but he didn’t find any. He grew angry at the lack of answers. Everything felt clouded and gray, and he couldn’t get a clear feel for Gregory or the lead. He searched every crevice and every hiding spot and then entertained thoughts of ripping out the drywall but knew that would cause too much of a disturbance. He couldn’t understand why Gregory wasn’t talking and for what reason. Clearly, Gregory was the right man. What innocent man would take this much suffering if he wasn’t hiding something that was worth it?
Curt yelled out in frustration and collapsed on the couch in the living room.
He caught his breath and sat up on the edge of the couch. He thought to himself, I’m going about this wrong. I’m too close. I need to take a step back.
Curt shut his eyes and tried to focus solely on the case. He had to think like a detective, not a hysterical father. If this were just another case….
“God dammit!” Curt cursed himself at the simplicity of the answer. He stood straight up with a renewed sense of energy and went through Gregory’s belongings. He had searched his person and removed his effects before tying him to the chair. Curt grabbed them off the counter and sifted through Gregory’s wallet. He found a few business cards that had phone numbers handwritten on the back, but nothing stood out.
His attention turned to Gregory’s cell phone. Curt had yet to find a perpetrator who didn’t use a cell phone in their criminal endeavors. The more arrogant suspects tended to keep more incriminating evidence that proved damning. Plus, it was the modern day lifeline that people used to stay connected, whether with family, friends, or co-conspirators. It was clear; since Josh wasn’t at the apartment, Gregory obviously had help keeping track of the boy. Curt was betting that person would be in Gregory’s phone.
Curt clicked on the phone and saw there was a pass code requirement.
“Shit!” If Gregory was willing to take a beating like that and could lead him to Josh, he damn sure wasn’t going to tell him the pass code, but this did not deter Curt. He’d seen Louis do this several times when trying to hack into a cell phone. He would say, “Low tech is sometimes the best way to defeat high tech.”
Curt never quite understood this saying until now. The pass code required some type of swipe across a four by four pattern of dots. Curt held the phone up to the light in the kitchen and tilted the screen to just the right angle in the light, revealing the oily smudge tracks on the phone. It was in a crisscross and a line up the right side of the pattern. Curt smiled, but in what sequence did the track start and end was the question. If he failed to guess the pass code, he could be locked out and the information lost. If Gregory was the paranoid sort, he would’ve set up a failsafe to crash the phone after too many failed attempts. He failed at the first try, but after the second try, the screen lit up, and Curt was granted access.
“Low tech.” He smiled while looking back at the unconscious Glenn Gregory.
In the phone calls and recent text messages, Curt found a high frequency of calls to a person named “Tobias.” He opened the text message thread and found exactly what he was looking for, correspondence back and forth from Gregory and “Tobias” that referenced “the kid.”
He found more text messages back on the day that the tipster saw Josh with Gregory in Tallahassee. It read: “I’m headed home; it’s your turn. Where do you want to meet up? Dinner?”
“Tobias” replied, “Sure, make it the usual place.”
A follow up text from “Tobias.”
“You shouldn’t have gone there with the kid. Too dangerous, coulda been spotted.”
Curt had enough and quit reading. He was convinced already that if Josh wasn’t with Gregory, he was with this “Tobias” person. Suddenly, plan B came to light. However, he needed some background. He read some of the other texts to gain an understanding of how they spoke to each other and got an idea of how to get “Tobias” to come to him.
Curt answered the text to “Tobias” to draw him out.
“We need to meet. I have something for the kid.”
A few minutes later he got a response, “Fine, give me a li’l bit.”
Curt replied, “Just let me know when.”
“K.”
All kinds of possibilities formulated in his head as to how this ruse would play out, but for now, he had to leave the apartment immediately and somehow take Gregory with him.
***
Dusk brought a curious purple and orange hue to the sky. As he sat in the parking lot waiting, Curt ignored the thumps. He thought about the text messages he had read in Gregory’s phone and let the information reverberate back and forth in his mind. They were cryptic in meaning, but he’d been around enough sexual deviants while working in the Special Victim’s Unit that he could interpret enough to make sense of the meanings. His son Josh was a possession to the men, not a symbol of affection. The uneasy feeling in his stomach was growing.
His father’s curiosity got the better of Curt. He couldn’t ignore the feeling any longer. He opened up Gregory’s cell phone and searched through the rest of the contents. He came to the photo album and took a deep breath before hitting the image on the screen, opening up the saved pictures. Please don’t be there, he said to himself.
There were random pictures of Gregory and several other men at various social gatherings and maybe even some at work but nothing from a hidden dark side. There were some funny pictures Gregory had saved from text messages and emails along with pictures of gourmet dishes of food but nothing deviant. He scrolled up and down and found a few of Josh playing alone in a park. He examined the picture’s background for a lead but couldn’t help but fixate on the boy’s face. The darkness was there—in his eyes, the hollow look of a soul stained by evil.
Curt exited out of the album, but another image caught his attention. It was an icon marked private. The uneasy feeling exploded into a paralyzing fear. He clicked on it, opening up the App. Another pattern pass code requirement but Curt easily defeated it because it was the same as the phone’s pass code.
Another deep breath.
He opened up the album, and his worst nightmare became a reality. There were dozens of pictures of Gregory and a man whom he assumed was “Tobias,” nude and in various sexual positions with his young son. Drawn to the horrific atrocities that his son was subjected to, bile began to accumulate by the gallon in his stomach. In the past, Curt had the unfortunate duty of working several child pornography cases during his ten
ure as a Special Victim’s detective. Each case and image held its own shock value and abhorrent depravity, but seeing his own son subjected to this was too much.
Curt fell out of the Crown Vic, trying to escape from the nightmare and crawled away from the car. He vomited on the wet ground while on his hands and knees. He retched repeatedly as his body convulsed violently. The shock was too much to bear.
Thump, thump.
All he saw was red—pure, blinding anger and hatred. Curt stood up, snatched the cell phone from the front seat, and stood at the trunk. He popped it open to reveal Glenn Gregory on his side, bound in a sweaty, bloody mess. His hands were still cuffed behind him and a thick strip of duct tape was across his mouth. Curt had left the dirty socks at the apartment in a minor act of mercy, but now he wished he had them after seeing the pictures.
Curt was breathing heavily and was unable to speak. He glared down at Gregory with wide eyes and hate seething from his pores. He wanted to inflict as much pain as he could for what he’d done to Josh. He held up the phone to show Gregory that he had found the disgusting images on his phone.
“You...you…raped him?” Curt’s face was fuming with hostility and revenge. He no longer saw Gregory as a man but as a despicable, child-molesting monster.
Gregory read the anger correctly and retracted into the dark, cramped trunk of the Crown Vic, avoiding his impending demise.
“You sick motherfucker! Is that why you took him? To be some kind of sex toy, you piece of shit? What? Did you and this other fuck just pass him around?”
Curt reached in and grabbed Gregory’s left ankle and pulled the lower half of his body just outside of the trunk. His feet dangled near the bumper as Curt held him down. He was awkwardly bent over the rim of the trunk, and the handcuffs behind his back made it impossible for Gregory to sit up. Curt searched for something in the trunk while the child molester was whimpering and whining through the duct tape.