Vanishing Point: A Warner & Lopez prequel novel

by Dean Crawford

  Ethan got up as he saw Ferraga’s thugs being led away in cuffs. He fully expected to end up in lockdown with them, but the officer in charge of the team looked at him.

  ‘Warner, it’s your lucky day. You’ve been bailed.’

  ‘I’ve been what?’

  ‘You’re out of here,’ the officer snapped. ‘Roll up your gear, and make it quick before some other idiot in here tries to cut your throat.’

  ***

  IX

  It took an hour to process Ethan out of the jail.

  His belongings were returned to him, but his bondsman license was withheld until trial. Ethan asked the duty officer who had posted his bail, and they told him, but he had no idea whom they were talking about.

  ‘Some woman called Lindsay Trent.’

  ‘I don’t know anybody by that name.’

  ‘It look like I care? You wanna go back into population?’

  Ethan said nothing as he was directed to the exit, and a minute or two later he was standing outside in a parking lot watching traffic thunder by on the I–57, less than a mile from the Kankakee River. He rifled through his meagre belongings and found his cell phone. He was about to call Lopez when a voice reached him from across the lot.

  ‘No, don’t call anyone!’

  Ethan saw a petite, blonde–haired woman hurrying toward him with a frantic expression on her face. She looked to be in her early forties, with blue eyes and a slender build. She was dressed plainly, just jeans and sneakers with a hooded top and Ethan towered over her, but she didn’t hesitate to rip the cell from his hands.

  ‘What the hell?’

  ‘I’m Lindsay Trent, and I just bailed you for fifty thousand dollars so for the next ten minutes do me the honor of shutting up and listening.’

  Ethan shut up and listened. Lindsay stared up at him, and then suddenly realized that he had obeyed and was waiting expectantly.

  ‘Oh, right,’ she said. ‘Okay, this is gonna sound crazy but I need you to hear me out. And you need to shut off the cell.’

  Ethan switched the phone off and slid it into his pocket, then looked down at Lindsay. ‘Why’d you bail me?’

  ‘Because you’re the only one who can find my son.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This way,’ Lindsay said as she hurried away toward a beaten–up Ford Ranger. ‘They’ll be here once they know that bail’s been posted.’

  ‘Who will be here?’

  ‘Hurry up!’

  Ethan followed Lindsay to the Ranger and climbed in. She started the truck and pulled out of the prison lot in a real hurry, turning south around the nearby airport as she got her bearings.

  ‘You’re gonna have to start making clear what this is all abou…’

  ‘I know who set you up,’ Lindsay said as though she hadn’t realised he was talking. ‘That man on the bridge, the whole thing, it was in the paper this morning and when I saw it and your name I knew that they were cutting you off.’

  ‘Who’s they? And how did you know my na…?’

  ‘I didn’t know your name of course, I was just reading about the case, but it was Dwayne Austin’s mug shot they put in the paper that caught my attention. Y’see, I recognized him. He used to live down this way for a bit, right before he left for the cult.’

  ‘What kind of cult are you talk…?’

  ‘Nobody liked Dwayne much, he was kind of a loner and folks knew that he was into trouble, he just looked that way sometimes. He had a job on the land here and worked pretty well, but he would only work for cash and it raised suspicions. Someone looked into it and sure enough he had a warrant out, so they were going to report him to the local PD when the cult came in and took him.’

  Ethan frowned. ‘The cult?’ he repeated.

  ‘I kinda liked Dwayne, he seemed like a nice kid who’d just gone off the rails someplace and never quite got his life back together again. Y’know, like they do these days, get into a vicious cycle of drugs or alcohol and can’t get ‘emselves back out? But when he took off like that, or rather when they took him, it was odd and I remembered it well. Then, my son was taken too.’

  Ethan was struggling to keep up with Lindsay’s recounting of her sorry tale.

  ‘The cult,’ he said. ‘What have they got to do with me?’

  ‘I’m talking, you’re listening,’ Lindsay admonished him. Ethan sighed and sat back, watching the broad landscape around them as she went on. ‘The cult operates somewhere down south Illinois. Some say it’s Cairo, others Miller City, nobody really knows. Anyways, they take disadvantaged folks, people on the run, and just make ‘em vanish.’

  Ethan thought about that for a moment.

  ‘And this happened to your son? Why’d they target him?’

  Lindsay sighed. Ethan noticed that the skin of her hands was rough, not something he saw often, as though she had worked the land herself for years. There were weary lines in the skin around her eyes and a few silvery threads in her blonde hair that probably should not have been there yet.

  ‘My husband died,’ she said abruptly. ‘Heart condition. We couldn’t afford the treatment and our insurance wouldn’t cover it. Ben was eight years old when it happened, a decade past now, so he grew up without a father figure. I did my best for him but like most kids he rebelled, fell in with the wrong crowd, got himself arrested for misdemeanour crimes. I’d hoped that he’d have grown out of it, but then one of his idiot friends pulled a gun on a convenience store owner in Bradley. Shots fired, the owner suffered minor gunshot injuries, Ben handed himself in the next morning as he was there. The other guys turned on him and blamed him for the shooting. Doesn’t matter that they’d lied and the detectives figured it out, Ben’s being there was enough to have him charged along with the others for attempted homicide and aggravated assault. Ten to life. He was in the Jerome Center like you for eight months before trial.’

  ‘Was he convicted?’

  ‘No, he was exonerated due to the lies told by his so–called friends, and the judge took pity on his presence and the fact that he was the only one who handed himself in. No charges, but everyone in the community shunned him and he couldn’t get a job, had nothin’. He was about to move away when he gets approached by this guy who offers him a dream opportunity down south, and by the time I heard about it Ben was gone and there was nothing I could do. Police won’t look into it because he’s an adult now, and probably because of his history here. I got nothing left, Mister Warner. If I don’t figure out where he is and what’s happened to him, I might as well just take a gun to my own face right now and not bother with any more of this shi….’

  Ethan saw tears falling from Lindsay’s cheeks as she drove, yanking the Ranger up a gear with unnecessary force. He took a slow, deep breath.

  ‘Okay, so you think that this cult has something to do with Ben’s disappearance and my arrest. Why? What’s the connection?’

  ‘Dwayne Austin was a member of the cult,’ she said. ‘When Ben vanished in the same way that Dwayne had done, talking of some amazing life–changing offer from a stranger from down south, I started looking for him. It took months but I finally found an image of him from Chicago at his High School. I went there, talked to his momma, found out things about him. Turns out that Dwayne Austin was blind in one eye from birth.’

  Ethan hesitated. He recalled Dwayne’s appearance, the way that he had looked.

  ‘He wasn’t blind in one eye,’ Ethan replied.

  ‘I know,’ Lindsay said, ‘that’s what I’m saying. The cult had done something to him, because he showed up here again a few weeks back asking people about the cult. Showed them his eye. It was pretty weird, I didn’t think it was possible yet to restore sight to the blind.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ Ethan replied.

  ‘Anyways,’ Lindsay went on, ‘Dwayne moves on toward Chicago, despite warnings that he’s still got a warrant out, but he ignores the advice. Said he was on a mission, had to figure somethin’ out. We figured that he was out on some kind of recr
uiting drive, y’know, like Mormons or whatever. But then you got arrested chasing him out of the city. I think that you got too close to him, he decided it was too risky to stay in the city and headed out, you were on his tail and somehow they arranged to set you up while removing Dwayne from play by killing him.’

  Ethan blinked. ‘That’s a hell of a leap, Lindsay.’

  ‘My son vanishing in the same way isn’t a figment of my imagination,’ she shot back. ‘He’s not the only one. I’ve researched towns across south Illinois and they’ve taken dozens, but law enforcement won’t listen as all those who have disappeared have been adults with the right to go where they please. There have been no ransom demands, no evidence of kidnap or coercion.’

  ‘So, they have nothing to investigate,’ Ethan replied.

  ‘Right, but these kids don’t just wander off. They’re all running from something, be it warrants or abuse or drugs or whatever. Every single one of them.’ She turned to look at Ethan. ‘Someone’s taking our kids, and they’re doing things to them that I don’t understand. Ben’s been gone for months and I’m terrified about what might have happened to him. I’ll cover your bond, it’s all I have left anyway without Ben here. Folks in Chicago said you’re one of the best in the city at finding lost souls, I’ve got nobody left to turn to and I just saved you from months of incarceration. Will you help?’

  Ethan stared at the scenery passing by and sighed.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look, I appreciate what you’re doing but I’m jammed up on a homicide charge and if I don’t show up at court to my bail officer, regular as clockwork, there’ll be a thousand police and Sheriff deputies chasing my sorry ass all over Illinois. I’ll look guilty as hell.’

  ‘I can run you back and forth,’ Lindsay said. ‘I got a little money left, I can make this work.’

  ‘And if you can’t?’

  Lindsay didn’t say anything in reponse, holding the wheel and staring straight ahead down the highway. Ethan sat back in his seat for a moment and thought about the cult.

  ‘You’re sure Austin was a part of their thing, that they’re connected?’

  ‘A hundred per cent.’

  Ethan figured that Lindsay could be right, and that somehow a cult located hundreds of miles to the south of Chicago could have some reason for trying to frame him for homicide, although right now he couldn’t imagine what that could be. His options were limited: go with Lindsay to Cairo to see what they could find, or head back to the jail where Ferraga and his thugs would be waiting.

  Lindsay wasn’t going to let him off the hook easy, either.

  ‘Course, the only reason you’re here right now is my bail money,’ she said. ‘I can spend it on a private investigator instead and you can go right back to the jail, if you’d prefer?’

  ***

  X

  Bryan R Mitchell Forensic Center

  Kankakee

  Lopez got the call from her lawyer that the autopsy on Dwayne Austin’s body had been performed before she even got out of the county. She turned back right away and found herself outside the very same jail in which Ethan was incarcerated, which held the Coroner’s Office as well as the Sherrif’s Office.

  Lopez made her way through the usual plethora of security checks before she was admitted into the building and guided by a security officer to the morgue. There, she entered and was met by Doctor Angela Hicks, the forensic pathologist in charge of the autopsy. A prim and proper physician of the old school with plain, pinned back hair and thin–rimmed spectacles, she looked oddly upset as Lopez met her.

  ‘Come this way, please.’

  Lopez followed Hicks into an office, where the pathologist closed the door behind them and appeared to check the room briefly before speaking.

  ‘What’s your interest in the Austin case?’

  Lopez was taken aback.

  ‘Well, my partner’s in the slammer for his murder although I know that he couldn’t have done it. I’m hoping that the autopsy would reveal who really killed Austin.’

  ‘What make you so sure that your partner could not have commited the homicide?’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t armed for a start and the victim died from a 9mm slug to the skull or so I’ve been led to believe.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  Lopez peered at her. ‘You wanna raise your mmmm to an aaaah and give me something I can use here?’

  Hicks stood with her arms folded and thought for a moment.

  ‘I completed the autopsy an hour ago and called the Sherrif to inform him of my findings. He comes down here right away with two guys from Homeland Security and they whisk the body, the paperwork and anything connected to Dwayne Austin and tell me never to speak of it again.’

  Lopez stared at Hicks in amazement. ‘They took the body while an investigation is still on–going?’

  ‘Gone,’ Hicks replied, her voice a whisper. ‘They told me to maintain that the victim died of a single gunshot wound to the head.’

  ‘And did he?’

  Hicks sighed, uncomfortable it seemed.

  ‘The gunshot wound killed him all right, but that’s not what bothers me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Hicks looked over her shoulder despite the fact that they were alone in a small room, as though someone might be listening through the walls.

  ‘It must be something to do with the enhancements.’

  ‘What enhancements?’

  ‘Dwayne Austin,’ Hicks replied, ‘wasn’t entirely human any more.’

  *

  Ethan sat and watched the flat Illinois countryside south of Tolono drifting past as the truck rattled down the I–57 and Lindsay rattled alongside him.

  ‘I got the lead from a friend of Dwayne Austin, someone he’d known back in high school in Chicago. He told me that Dwayne was not supposed to remain in contact with anyone from outside the cult, but Dwayne wasn’t much one for rules and when he went back to the south side he visited a few folks. They were as surprised as you were about his restored sight, talked about it a lot, but Dwayne wouldn’t give anything up other than the folks down south were helping him out, turning his life around.’

  ‘They did that all right,’ Ethan replied, ‘turned it around enough to end it.’

  ‘Like I said, these are dangerous folks. I wouldn’t want to face off against them, not alone anyways.’

  Ethan said nothing as they drove further, and even Lindsay fell silent as the miles passed them by. Ethan knew that as soon as the Illinois Sherriff’s department realized that he’d fled south in violation of his bail restrictions they would launch the mother of all manhunts. But he also knew that nobody but Lopez was going to go digging around his case when it seemed to cut and dried. They’d leave it to a court to figure that one out, months or even years down the line when the evidence was cold and after Ethan had spent the time rotting behind the bars of one jail cell or another.

  He figured he had maybe a day or so, to get to the bottom of what had happened and clear his name. The fact that he was now driving south with a woman he had only just met, a homicide conviction hanging over his head and a potentially murderous cult waiting for him at the other end didn’t do anything to calm his nerves. This was a damned long shot, and he longed to call Lopez and let her know what he was doing.

  ‘You can’t speak to anyone,’ Lindsay had warned him. ‘They know everything, these folks. They’ll trace your every step and if they know you’re coming for them, they’ll have chance to prepare.’

  About the only thing he had on his side was Lindsay and surprise. But even then, Ethan wondered what he could possibly find down here that would clear his name.

  ‘Ben,’ Lindsay replied. ‘He’s not been gone long enough to have been twisted in his head by some crazy cult. He’ll know things, be able to vouch that Austin was there, maybe even provide evidence that you were set up. It’s all you’ve got, all I’ve got.’

  Destined it seemed to pursue the cult,
Ethan set himself the mental task of getting his thoughts in order. He and Lopez had been hunting for Austin in order to claim the bail he’d jumped while in the city. That meant that either he’d jumped bail to deliberately draw them in, which seemed unlikely, or he’d showed up to draw them in on purpose, leaving a trail. But then, why would he have targeted them? Far as Ethan could recall, he’d never visited southern Illinois and hadn’t really heard of Cairo until that day.

  ‘Do you have any idea why they were targeting me or Nicola?’ he asked Lindsay.

  ‘Beats me,’ she replied as she drove. ‘Must’ve been up to something though, something that got them riled up.’

  Ethan thought back to the cases they had been working on at the time. Like any agency they juggled multiple cases, mostly bail runners but also missing persons and other investigative work that had gained them the reputation that had led Lindsay to Ethan. Dwayne Austin was just one of many folks being hunted down on the streets of Chicago and if they hadn’t received the call…

  ‘The tip off,’ Ethan said out loud. ‘We didn’t stumble into Austin, we were told where he was by an informant.’

  ‘You know who?’ Lindsay asked.

  ‘Sure,’ Ethan said, ‘a former meth addict called Wilson, but Wilson’s no cult member. Runs a machine shop on the south side, been clean for years now.’

  ‘But he might have known Austin, back in the day.’

  ‘Wilson said he saw Austin in town, spoke to him, learned that he was in the city just for a couple of days and was heading south soon. He gave me a description. Nicola and I picked up the trail and found out he’d bought tickets for a Greyhound headed for Missouri.’

  ‘But then why go all the way up to come all the way down? It must have been something else that drew you to the cult’s attention.’

  Ethan nodded, other cases flitting through his mind.

  ‘You said that people were vanishing in the same way down here, down in Kankakee.’

  ‘All through Illinois,’ she replied, ‘but especially in the small towns.’