by J J Miller
“Any phone can be traced if you can read the number. It’s not even a hack—cops do it every day.”
“What else? What else can we do?”
“Make yourself useful. You can put the kettle on. Black tea for me, please.”
I stood there unmoved. Charlie lifted her head.
“You do know how to make tea, don’t you?”
I was disarmed. My emotions were swinging wildly between manic and placid at every turn.
“Yes, of course.”
I turned to go.
“And by the time you’re done, hopefully I’ll have the footage we need to see who we’re dealing with.”
“The footage?”
“Yes. I’m hacking Sota’s CCTV cameras, and any others I can find in the vicinity.”
29
Watching Charlie work her laptop and phone was like watching Senna drive. The software she was running was being operated at warp-speed pace. My extreme anxiety had not abated, but I was relieved to have Charlie on board.
I’d spent the past ten minutes apologizing to Claire for all the horrible things I’d said. My apology was accepted, but that hadn’t made the hurt evaporate. It was like I’d been too eager to even the score after she’d chided me for leaving Bella at the shooting. On both counts, we’d only succeeded in giving each other fresh wounds that needed time to heal.
Jack had joined us to work through what little we had and try to find a clue as to who was behind this. But we were getting nowhere. No hint or connection stood out. The three of us fell into silence for a while until Claire broke it.
“How did they get my number?” she said. “It’s my private cell. My business cell is listed on my website. It’s the one I give out to everyone in the industry. But my private number is strictly personal. Would that mean it’s someone I know?”
“Not necessarily,” said Jack.
“Why not?”
“Have you been to a store lately that sends you a text receipt?”
Claire thought about it.
“Yes. When was it? Tuesday. I was at Jackman’s Hi-Fi.” Claire took up her phone and began scrolling through her text messages. “I bought Bella a pair of headphones. The woman at the counter asked me if I wanted her to send me the receipt by phone. I said yes and gave the number to her. Here it is. Tuesday, eleven seventeen.”
Claire looked up from her phone sadly.
“It’s quite possible you were followed,” Jack said. “If they were standing nearby, they would have heard you give out your number.”
“I think I’m going to be sick.” Claire launched out of her chair, bent over the kitchen sink and heaved into it. I put my arm over her shoulders and held her hair out of the way.
“It’s not certain that’s what happened, Claire,” I said. “It’s just a possibility. There are many things about ourselves that we give away without thinking.”
I grabbed a tea towel to wipe Claire’s mouth and got her a glass of water. “Here, rinse with this.”
She drank some water, swirled it around in her mouth, and spat it into the sink. Then she turned her back to the counter and leaned against it. She looked exhausted but not frail. Like me, she’d pulled herself back from the brink of going to pieces and was now tapping her inner reserves of fight.
One thought that had come and gone was whether the text messages I’d received during Demarco’s trial were at all related. Like I said, it was pretty much standard for me to be subjected to such vitriol when defending an alleged killer. I’d dismissed them because they were not unusual, but maybe I was wrong to do so. Now it was time to share.
“During the Torrell trial, I was getting some hateful text messages,” I said.
“You never told me about that,” said Jack.
“I know, because it’s not unusual. Every time I defend a murder charge, a troll gets my number off my website and starts abusing me. Most often it’s more than one, so Demarco’s case was below average in terms of trolling.”
“What did these messages say?”
“Just the usual—that I had a warped sense of justice. The gist was that I was a reprehensible human being. That sort of thing. Like I said, it’s just the daily coffee and bagel for a defense attorney.”
“Show them to me,” said Jack.
I found them on my phone and handed it to him.
Jack read them out aloud: “‘You know nothing about justice! You’re a fraud!’ ‘You’re going to learn what real justice is. I’m going to teach you.’”
Jack looked like he was a teacher I’d deeply disappointed.
“You should have at least flagged these, Brad. This last one is a threat. This could be the kidnapper.”
“It happens all the time, Jack. Both are blocked numbers. We can’t even say for sure that they both came from one person.”
“But it sure looks that way—the theme is the same—that he wants to school you in the meaning of the word ‘justice’. And he likes to keep the caps lock on.”
“But the messages we got this morning were directed to both me and Claire.”
“True, but I’m not sure that proves these earlier messages are not connected.”
Jack was right. And that’s what Claire was thinking. Suddenly there was a possibility that this was not about Bella’s Instagram activity at all but that it had something to do with Demarco’s trial. Given that we were both licking our wounds, Claire had the grace to not throw this revelation in my face.
“Let’s bring it back to square one again,” said Jack. “What does this person want? We don’t know his motive, but it perhaps stems from Bella’s Instagram activity or Brad’s trial. No demands have been made of either of you so far. No money. No grievances expressed. Nothing to indicate this is payback, punishment, a lesson or a protest—something directed at either or both of you. And then there’s the possibility that taking Bella was the sole objective.”
“If he wants something, he’ll have to tell us soon, you’d think,” I said.
We all stewed on the same thought—what a deeply vile thing it was to hope for the chance to understand the motive of the person who had taken your daughter, who could be doing unspeakable things to her at this very moment. But a motive against Claire or me meant at least there was hope we could pay some kind of price to get our daughter back. The worst thought was that, if getting hold of Bella had been the kidnapper’s objective, then there was nothing to be asked of us, that all this waiting was just giving time to a sadist who had no intention of sparing our daughter.
“Maybe we should go to the police,” said Claire.
“No,” I shook my head. “We don’t know where this person is or what capacity they have to monitor us. Whatever we do must be in the shadows.”
“What is it we’re doing exactly, for God’s sake!? We’re sitting around the kitchen like little lost mice while our daughter is in the hands of some maniac!”
“Not yet, Claire. We have to...”
Suddenly, Charlie’s voice rang out again.
“Do any of you recognize this woman?”
The three of us rushed over to Charlie and crowded around her laptop.
“This is footage from inside Sota,” she said.
It took a second to distinguish the make-up of the black-and-white video. But then it was clear—the legs of pedestrians passing the front of the store crossed the screen. Two women, Caitlin and the sales assistant, were standing in the bottom right corner. Both spun around and walked out of frame. At that moment, the figure of a young girl emerged from behind a clothes rack positioned to the left. There was no mistaking her.
“Bella!” Claire and I said in unison. It was the saddest way we’d ever said her name. We both spoke softly, as though by some miracle we could reach her, reassure her.
The silent footage was haunting to watch. For us, it was a horror movie in the most visceral sense. The camera’s field of view took in perhaps one-third of the shop. We watched as Bella touched an item of clothing, pulling the mater
ial toward herself.
A woman appeared at the doorway. She just stood there, her head was not in the shot, and she did not move to enter the store. Then she bent forward to address Bella and her head came into frame. My heart pounded. I recognized her. At least, I thought I did.
“Charlie, stop,” I said. “Can you enhance her face?”
“Do you know her?” asked Claire breathlessly.
“I’m not sure.” But when Charlie cropped in, all doubt left my mind. I knew her all right.
“My God,” I said. “It’s Francine.”
“Who?”
I felt light-headed and weak, like all the blood was draining out of my flesh. Every bit of me felt like I’d seen a ghost. I leaned in closer to the screen. “Francine Holmes. She was a witness in the trial.”
“Which trial?” asked Claire.
“Demarco Torrell. She buried him in court. She’s a scary religious type. She’d have enjoyed watching him burn in hell.” I tapped Charlie on the shoulder. “Keep playing.”
Charlie zoomed out and hit the play button again. Francine addressed Bella without moving an inch from her position at the door. They spoke for a few seconds, and Bella took a step towards her. Then she began to jiggle on the spot excitedly. Francine raised a finger to her lips. Bella clasped her hands together. Francine beckoned her. Bella shot a glance towards where Caitlin must have been, in the fitting room, and then scurried over to Francine. As Bella reached Francine, the woman put an arm around her and escorted her out onto the sidewalk. They walked straight to the curb, their bodies rising out of the top of the frame. They stopped where a black car was parked. As the rear door opened, Bella’s feet jumped up and down. Then suddenly Bella’s body fell into the car, like she’d been yanked hard. Francine got in and the door closed quickly behind her. The footage then showed the car pulling away from the curb.
“Oh my God. Oh my God,” repeated Claire. “Who is she? Brad, who is that woman?”
I told them everything I knew about Francine Holmes. How she was there to “rescue” Bella at the shooting. How she all but chided me for being a bad father for abandoning Bella. I told them she was a patron of Cicily Pines and other wholesome YouTubers and had promised Bella the opportunity to meet Cicily in the near future. I told them how she’d been a religious counselor at the Skid Row shelter, where she’d bonded with Demarco Torrell until he displeased her. I told them she reserved a barely concealed wrath for Demarco, as though his choice to be independent of her was a sinful betrayal. I said I was prepared for her to be unfavorable towards Demarco at the trial, but she’d been downright vengeful.
But as to the most important question about Francine Holmes, I had no answer. Why had she taken Bella? Surely the reason was not purely to harm her. Given the open contempt Francine had for my parenting skills, I figured it must be about me. But Claire was being targeted too. Was this an act of deranged, righteous punishment for our parenting choices? From my experience with Francine, that kind of made sense.
“If anyone’s going to be a moral crusader, it would be her,” I said, thinking out aloud.
“What do you mean?” asked Claire.
“She’s a fanatic. I’ve seen how she turned on Demarco. She was happy to see him sentenced to death for turning away from her. There is a terrible, hateful streak of retribution in her.”
“But what have you done, what have we done, to earn her wrath?” said Claire.
“I don’t know, but maybe she loathed us as parents—me running off, Bella’s social media profile—and decided to teach us a lesson.”
“But that’s absurd. Some wicked witch has taken my baby because she’s decided I’m a bad mother?!”
Jack came over and said what I was thinking but dared not to articulate.
“You’re right. It does sound absurd. But there may be a serial killer carrying out some kind of a moral crusade.”
“Serial killer? What the hell are you talking about?” Claire struggled to believe things could be even worse than she had imagined. She looked at me.
I had to step in.
“During the Torrell case we got a tip-off that the Anaheim murder could be the work of a serial killer. His targets were supposedly social media stars who were leading America’s youth astray.”
“Oh my God. You knew this and this is the first I’m hearing about it?”
“We looked into it, Claire but it just seemed preposterous. We were told about two other killings but we could not find any links between those murders and the ones Demarco Torrell was accused of. In the end, I had to set it aside and focus on Demarco’s defense.”
“And now?”
“It’s still just a theory. But now we have Francine Holmes, a vengeful moralist, who has taken our daughter after openly condemning her social media activity.”
Claire was speechless as thoughts of the deepest horror set in. Desperate to think up a clue, I reran the events of my first meeting with Francine Holmes. And I realized something: she wasn’t the killer.
“Francine Holmes didn’t shoot Luke Jameson,” I said. “I can tell you that now. We were in the queue for Cicily Pines when we heard the shots, and she was standing a few yards away from us.”
Claire freed herself from the torrent of negative thought to speak, uttering her words as she stared into mid-space.
“Cicily Pines,” she said. “I bet that’s how she got Bella to go with her. That witch told her Cicily was in the car.”
I thought about it. Of course, she was right. The way Bella suddenly broke into an excited dance on the spot. The way Francine had hushed her. Bella’s indecision—caught between staying put in the shop and meeting her idol—had been visible until the prospect of meeting Cicily won out. Just as Francine Holmes must have suspected it would. She’d led Bella straight into her trap.
But Francine wasn’t working alone. Someone else pulled Bella into that car.
The car! The black car.
I rushed over to Charlie.
“Charlie, I want to get a look at the car. Can you go back?”
Charlie pulled the footage back to where the door closed and the car pulled out. It took just a second to identify the make.
“Black Lincoln,” I said and turned to Jack. He knew it too.
“What does that mean, Brad?” Claire said. “You know something—what is it?”
For more than a few seconds I hesitated. Dino Cassinelli’s serial killer theory was morphing fast into devastating fact.
How could I tell the mother of our little girl that I was now certain she was in the hands of a serial killer?
✽✽✽
Claire took the news in grim silence. It was as though hope itself had been exposed as a wicked, hollow sham. For a few moments she appeared to surrender to the hideous forces driving her to despair. She was beyond tears. The distraught words she uttered were barely audible. I sat next to her and held her like a child. I told her everything we knew about the suspected serial killer, everything we’d been told. In time she found the traction needed to haul her emotions back from the brink. Her whole countenance steeled, her eyes too, as she began to imagine the person bringing this torture upon us.
I started with the reports we had from Skid Row, that a bald man sitting in a new black car—a Lincoln—had been seen talking to Toby Connors in the minutes before he met Demarco Torrell outside the mission. I told her his facial features were so gaunt that one witness had described him as having a skull-face. I told her about the two other murders in Florida and Mexico where, we believed, destitute men had been set up to take the blame. I also told her about Dino Cassinelli and his efforts to get me to believe his crazy theory.
“Where is this Cassinelli?” Claire said.
“I don’t know.”
“He’s a cop, right? Can you trust him?”
“Yeah, he’s a disgraced cop, which is partly why it took us so long to take him seriously. But now I trust him completely.”
“So he should be on the team,” Clair
e said.
She was right.
“Call him. Now.” She ordered.
Cassinelli answered after one ring. I was relieved he sounded sober. He remained silent for the most part while I explained what was going on and detailed what we knew of the suspect.
“What do you want me to do?”
“We’re trying to identify the man that Francine Holmes seems to be working with.”
“You got a photo?”
“We don’t even have a name.”
“I’ll get you an image,” he said.
“How?” I reminded Cassinelli no one could know what we were doing—one false move could prompt my daughter’s death. He said he understood perfectly.
“You remember the first witness in the trial, the one who claimed Torrell was the trigger man?”
“Yeah, Mandy. Mandy Alvarez,” I said.
“That’s the one. Now she said she saw Torrell’s face lit up by the muzzle flash. She said she saw Harrington. But she also said she saw another guy’s face, an older guy.”
“How do you know all this? I didn’t ever see you inside the courtroom.”
“I followed it closely, Madison. I read all the transcripts.”
“So you’ll go see Mandy?”
“Yeah. I’ll be in touch.”
Cassinelli hung up. I was left on the line thinking maybe all this could have been prevented if I’d put my faith in him months ago.
My phone rang. It was Cassinelli again.
“Dino, what’s up?”
“I forgot to mention something I thought you should know.”
“What’s that?”
“You know the Kyle Chambers death, the kid who died in the fire down in Puerto Escondido?”
“Yeah, we followed that lead and the perp got knifed before we could ask him any questions.”
“Well, months ago I was trying to get hold of the kid’s mother. But after her son’s death she went traveling, I guess to restore some faith in humanity. She went completely off the grid—trekking in Nepal or Bhutan or something like that. No email, no phone. You couldn’t reach her with a fricking carrier pigeon. But I kept on calling her, and a couple of weeks ago she finally got back to me. So I went and spoke with her.”