by Rick Mofina
Or a monster.
46
Two days later, under glaring TV lights set up in the search center near the Lanes’ home, a makeup artist touched up Karen’s and Ryan’s faces.
“To take the shine off when you’re on,” the artist said.
The couple was seated close together, holding hands. Their clip-on microphones had been sound checked, and the voice of Morgan Stone, the national network’s famous anchor, came through their earpieces.
“Karen and Ryan, I want to thank you for doing this at such a difficult time,” Stone said from network headquarters in New York. “Just look into the camera and think of this as a conversation with friends.”
“Okay.” Karen offered a nervous smile and Ryan nodded.
Three minutes later Stone began the live interview. She introduced the Lanes, provided some general background while images of Maddie and her case flowed on half the screen and activity in the center continued behind them.
“Thank you for joining us,” Stone said to the couple. “We can’t imagine the anguish and pain you as parents are enduring at this time.”
“Thank you,” Karen said, glancing quickly to Cole, Jill, then Dalton and Tyler, who were watching off camera a few feet away.
“For viewers who might be learning of this case for the first time, take us through those horrible hours when you discovered Maddie was gone.”
After Karen and Ryan related events, Stone asked, “What do you think happened?”
“We think someone came into our home and took Maddie,” Ryan said.
“Do you think it was the halfway house convict, Kalmen Gatt?”
“Based on what we know,” Ryan said, “and we only know what we’re hearing and what’s in the press, everything points to Gatt.”
“Yes, but police have stated that while they continue investigating Gatt, which is challenging now that he’s dead, they’ve ruled nothing out and everybody remains a suspect.”
“Yes, we understand that.” Karen squeezed Ryan’s hand.
“We understand your family and extended family have submitted to polygraphs.”
“Yes,” Ryan said. Remembering Cole’s attorney’s advice, he was careful to withhold anything incriminating. “We’re cooperating fully with police.”
“What do you think of the theory that Maddie ran away?”
“We don’t believe it for a second,” Karen said. “Yes, she’s a headstrong, energetic young girl, but she wouldn’t do this.”
“You’re her mom and you’d know her best.”
“Yes.” Karen wiped a tear away.
“Donations to the reward for information leading to Maddie’s return have been incredible,” Stone said. “It’s now at one hundred thousand dollars. What do you make of the response?”
“It means the world to us,” Ryan said. “Words fail to express our gratitude to everyone here at the center, Maddie’s school friends, teachers, neighbors, our coworkers, volunteers and strangers. The messages of support and prayers from across the country mean so much.”
“If by chance Maddie’s watching, what would you say to her, or the person who knows what’s happened to her?”
Karen’s voice quavered. “Maddie, sweetie, we love you, honey, and we’re doing all we can to find you.”
Ryan put his arm around Karen and said, “To the person or persons who know what happened, we only want our daughter back.”
“In our hearts,” Karen said through her tears, “we believe and feel that Maddie’s alive, and we’re begging that whoever knows where she is, get word to authorities. Please don’t hurt her. Please do the right thing.”
Stone let a beat pass before resuming.
“Ryan, Karen, I know this is difficult, but how do you deal with the fact that statistically family members are implicated in most cases like this? And that police sources tell our network that among their working theories is that Maddie’s disappearance was staged, perhaps to cover up a family accident because no one heard a struggle or heard her cry out.”
“We’re aware of the speculation,” Ryan said. “But these are the facts—our son heard voices in Maddie’s room, her window was unlocked, there was a ladder on the ground under it and mud streaks on Maddie’s carpet and the walls near the window. I can’t go into detail, but we know that Gatt, a convicted criminal, had an interest in our daughter.”
“We are not involved and we’re cooperating with police,” Karen said.
“Karen, our researchers have discovered that your sister, Cassie, drowned tragically when she was ten in a swimming accident.”
Karen blinked several times as Stone continued.
“And not long after that, your mother died. Some say of a broken heart over Cassie’s death. You were with them both at that time.” Stone sighed, her eyes glistening sympathetically. “And now your daughter’s missing. So much tragedy for you. Where do you find the strength?”
Karen was at a loss and Ryan held her close.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s hard. All of this is so hard.”
Karen touched a tissue to her eyes, and Stone gave her a second.
“You’re so brave,” Stone said before moving on. “Now, Ryan, Karen, we’d like your response to some video footage our network has obtained through our sources. Take a look.”
The network crew directed Ryan and Karen to watch a monitor that began rolling the security camera footage of Ryan violently dragging Maddie into his truck and striking her. Karen’s eyes widened—she was seeing it for the first time. Before it ended, Ryan saw Zubik and Asher in a corner of the search center watching the interview on a TV and his jaw clenched.
“That footage was recorded shortly before Maddie disappeared,” Stone said. “That’s you and Maddie, Ryan. What’s your response to these dramatic images?”
A few seconds passed and Ryan, stunned that someone had leaked the footage to Stone, cleared his throat.
“Maddie,” he began. “She’d had an argument with Karen and walked out of the house. It was the only time she’d done this. I was upset and stressed, and when I found her she refused to get out of the rain and into my truck and come home. I forced her into the truck. She was upset. I lost my temper.”
Stone said nothing.
“We’re not perfect people,” Ryan said.
“What do you mean?” Stone said.
“Just that we’re a normal family with normal family issues and like any family. We’re not perfect.”
Stone let a moment pass before concluding.
“Karen and Ryan Lane, I’m sure our viewers join you in your prayers to find your daughter and bring her home. Thank you for being with us.”
47
“You’re going to burn in hell for what you did.”
The anonymous email that included the televised video clip of Ryan dragging Maddie into his truck was among the scores of hate-filled messages the Lanes had received immediately after their interview with Morgan Stone.
Each one pierced Karen’s heart, but they were eclipsed by the revelation that Ryan had struck Maddie, and she confronted him with it when they got home.
“How could you hit her? How could you do that?”
“You know how it was that day. You two were arguing, she ran out and I had to find her. I had to drag her into my truck. She called you a bitch and—” Ryan’s voice broke, tears brimmed in his eyes. “I’ve got a temper. I’m cursed with my old man’s mean streak, and I just lost it with her. I swear it was just that one time. And I’m going to have to live with it.”
“You should’ve been able to control your temper! You’re the adult! You crossed a line, Ryan, and oh God—”
All the things that she had said to Maddie, that she had done, and that she had sent Ryan into the rain to bring Maddie home... She had set things in motion. Karen broke down.
Ryan embraced her.
“I’m so sorry,” Ryan said.
He deleted the email.
But they kept coming, part of the fallout from appearing on national TV. It had sparked an online debate on the case. Some of it pointed to Kalmen Gatt as the suspect, but most people alleged that there was a cloud of suspicion over the family. And it didn’t help that nothing new had emerged from the investigation to confirm Gatt as Maddie’s abductor.
Still, when Cole came to their home after the TV interview, he urged Karen and Ryan to remain positive.
“That video is not good, but the Morgan Stone appearance has given the case a national profile,” he said. “We’ve got our investigators across the country and subcontractors digging into every other conceivable element. We’re going to find her and bring her home.”
But Cole’s words fell like water against the stone-cold reality of life without Maddie. Her absence was a gaping hole in their existence.
For much of the day, Karen, upon learning that police had finished searching Lucifer’s Green, wandered alone in the woods as if expecting Maddie to somehow materialize there. She followed the path Maddie might have taken only to find nothing but pain and a desperate notion that Tyler could help her. She hurried back to the house, nearly out of breath.
“Tyler, you’ve got to ask her friends for help. I need to know what she was thinking before she was gone.”
“Mom, her friends are sad but they don’t know anything.”
“Maddie had her phone in her hand when she went to sleep. They must know what she was saying what she was thinking.”
Tyler stared blankly at nothing.
“Tyler?”
“That video of dad is everywhere,” he said, his voice breaking. “How could he hit Maddie like that?”
Karen grabbed his shoulders. “Listen. What your father did was wrong. Completely wrong and he’s sorry.”
“How could he be so mean to her? I just don’t—”
“Honey, I know. It was a horrible day with Maddie, me and dad. It’s my fault, too and I’m so, so sorry. If we could go back in time, things would be different. But it’s because of that, because of everything, you’ve got to help me by asking Maddie’s friends what she was thinking.”
“Mom, I can’t.”
“Please, Tyler, they won’t tell me but they’ll tell you. You’ve got to try.”
“Mom, don’t make me.”
“Why not?”
“Because this is what the kids at school are saying after you were on TV.” Tyler showed Karen a message.
Hey Lame Brain Lane! Everyone now thinks your family faked your sister’s disappearance to get that big fat reward. Is that true?
Karen turned away, defeated.
* * *
Ryan had retreated into his own anguish. That video was everywhere.
His shame was overwhelming; he’d been emotionally gutted. He ached to have Maddie back so he could hold her and tell her how sorry he was and how much he loved her.
He felt like a cursed man living with a terrible dark affliction, and it tore him up inside—because it was true.
He was a guilty man.
The things I’ve done are unforgivable.
The Lanes got a call from police services who were offering to arrange for counselors, but Ryan reached for whiskey as the emails kept coming.
Ryan Lane: We saw you on Morgan Stone and that video on TV. It’s obvious you two killed your daughter. Why don’t you confess?
48
“Maddison Lane is dead...”
Zubik listened to the female caller’s muffled voice, which had been recorded on the tip line.
“Maddison was kidnapped by a serial killer named Barabbas. He dismembered her and burned her remains. He is on the hunt for other victims. This information was channeled to me spiritually. Goodbye.”
Zubik’s gaze shifted to Asher who shook her head.
“The claim is unfounded,” Asher said. “The caller is a troubled woman in Iowa who boasts of having cosmic, mystic, psychic abilities. She often calls on high-profile cases.”
In the wake of the Lanes’ interview with Morgan Stone, investigators had received an influx of tips that continued into the morning after the show was broadcast. The task force had said little publicly other than that it continued to study all aspects of the case. But behind the scenes Zubik feared that the investigation had stalled with Gatt’s death.
As for Ryan Lane, as disturbing as the video was, at this stage they had nothing to harden their suspicions that Ryan was involved. Besides the footage, they had the inconclusive polygraph results, financial stress in the family, Karen’s argument with Maddison, but it was still all circumstantial.
And it was the same with Kalmen Gatt. They had the photos he’d taken but no evidence to put him inside her bedroom or at her window, nothing strong enough to close the case. Their search of every alley, lot and abandoned building around the halfway house had come up empty. Interviews with inmates, coworkers and others who knew Gatt had so far yielded nothing more linking him to Maddison.
Did he do more than take pictures from the woods?
One theory held that Gatt had killed and buried Maddie. Investigators were planning to go back into Lucifer’s Green and conduct a new search using cadaver dogs and ground-penetrating sonar.
That would take time.
Forensic examination of the window, the bedroom, the ladder provided no new leads. Of course, Ryan’s, Karen’s and Tyler’s prints were found everywhere in the house. And, as expected, so were Cole’s, Jill’s and Dalton’s in every room, because they often visited before Maddison vanished.
And everyone they had interviewed—Maddison’s friends, teachers, coaches, neighbors, Ryan and Karen’s coworkers, the babysitter, her boyfriend, even Bennie Price, the pizza delivery man—had been alibied.
Zubik continued reviewing the files and notes.
They’d followed up with Maddison’s friend Brooke Carson who’d told them how Maddison had seemed troubled, cryptically confiding that something was happening in her life shortly before she’d disappeared. They’d pressed Brooke to provide additional information or context. But that second interview ended with Brooke in tears because she couldn’t remember more details.
Zubik moved on to other reports.
A retired schoolteacher told police that she’d seen Maddison in a car in a mall parking lot in Watertown, New York, and got the plate number. Follow-up investigation showed the girl did resemble Maddison but was not her. The Watertown girl was fifteen and with her family at the mall.
In Cleveland, a male caller said he’d overheard a paroled ex-friend at a bar claim Maddison’s abduction was a robbery gone wrong, and he was holding her for ransom. Cleveland FBI followed up and found the claim to be without substance. Drunken bar talk, Zubik thought, moving to review another call when Jay Tomkins, with the Computer Forensic Unit, approached him.
“Just sent you something, Stan. Open it up.”
Tomkins had been working with the county, state and FBI cyber experts along with service providers on the mystery burner phone number, the last number Maddison had communicated with before she vanished. They obtained warrants to track cell phone tower signals to reveal the phone’s location when it was used to communicate with Maddison.
Now Tomkins had the results.
Zubik went to his mail, opened a map of greater Syracuse with a dizzying display of colors and cone-shaped patterns superimposed on it.
“Okay,” Tomkins said, pointing at the monitor as Asher joined him. “We triangulated the signal from the burner phone in the time before her disappearance, and we’ve been able to chart the path of the burner phone’s user and the times. That’s the bright yellow dotted line zigzagging everywhere. In some cases we got as close as twenty-five feet of the locat
ion—in others the distance is much greater. And there are gaps, so in some spots we’re guessing. But you’ll see by the distance and time that the user had to be mobile, definitely in a vehicle, not on foot.”
The map showed locations near the halfway house on DeBerry, and on the other side of the woods close to the Lanes’ home and all over the city.
“But you don’t have an ending point?” Zubik asked.
“Not a clear one. Somewhere downtown,” Tomkins said. “The phone was likely switched off, the battery and memory card removed. We’re going to canvass and check security footage of every possible address along the way.”
“It’s the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack,” Asher said.
“And finding them is how we solve cases,” Zubik said.
“Okay, with that in mind,” Asher said, “let’s consider the people who were the last to see her.”
They had Ryan Lane, the disturbing video, his financial stress. They had Karen Lane, with her tragic history of being present at the deaths of her sister and mother, her arguments with Maddison, and the fact Maddison had fled the house in anger; and that the parents’ polygraphs were inconclusive. Then they had Tyler, her brother, with his knives and admission that his sister owed him twenty-five dollars, and the fact he was awake in the night when she vanished.
“And the others,” Zubik said.
Zachary Keppler, the babysitter’s boyfriend, admitted to being under Maddison’s window earlier that night. He thought she was “real cute.” But he was solidly alibied and passed his polygraph.
They had Bennie Price, the pizza guy, who’d made a delivery to the Lane home earlier that night, greeted Maddison and her brother. But Price was alibied, making deliveries until 4:30 a.m. before going home.
Asher went over the long list of other people. Cole, Jill and Dalton Lane—all were alibied. Maddison’s school friends, the boys she liked and the boys who liked her. All alibied.
Again the detectives contended with theories, ranging from the likelihood a sex offender took Maddison, to the possibility she was killed in the home and her disappearance staged.