Missing Daughter

by Rick Mofina

  “We better hurry, Stan. The unit sitting on the Lanes’ house says there’s a lot of sudden activity, people arriving, and I’m thinking with the press on us, it’s going to blow up any moment now.”

  84

  The girl’s face was frozen on the Lanes’ TV.

  Karen shook her head, rocked back and forth, hugging herself on the sofa. “No, no, I don’t believe this.” She looked up at the face looking down at her. “Maddie’s confused. She’s having a breakdown. Look at all she’s been through. She doesn’t know what’s real anymore.”

  Ryan stared at the screen as if waiting for the girl in the video to step from it and say that this was all a bad joke. When that didn’t happen, he turned to his brother.

  “Cole, what the hell’s going on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is this true what this—this fake—is saying?” Ryan said.

  “Stop! Don’t call her that,” Tyler said. “That’s Maddie—that’s my sister! Mom’s right. She’s confused, she’s flipped out. We’ve got to find her. Help me locate her phone, Dalton.”

  Tyler was texting, trying to reach Maddie on her phone. Dalton worked on his for several seconds then said, “Looks like she’s disabled it. Shut everything down.”

  Ryan went back to Cole. “What the hell’s going on here? Did that girl, whoever she is, set something up with the people in Florida to grab the reward money?”

  Cole was shaking his head.

  “I don’t know.”

  Ryan turned to his sister-in-law. “Jill, what do you think is going on here?”

  She shook her head, her eyes brimming with tears as she rubbed Karen’s shoulders.

  “Dalton? Do you have any ideas?”

  He glanced at his father, then the others, then the TV.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, Uncle Ryan.”

  Cole had gone to the window, took a breath and let it out slowly.

  “Get ready,” he said. “Two marked and two unmarked cars just arrived, and there’s a TV news van coming up the street.”

  85

  “You have the right to remain silent...”

  Sitting across from Zubik and Asher, Ryan’s world was coming apart, just as it had four years ago in this very room at police headquarters.

  “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law...”

  The wounds he’d suffered when they’d first lost Maddie had been ripped open, and the same fears slithered around his heart.

  She’s gone, she’s really gone. How much more can we take?

  “You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand these rights?”

  “Did you find Maddie?”

  “Ryan, do you understand your rights and do you wish to have an attorney present?” Asher asked.

  “I understand and I don’t want a lawyer.” Ryan signed the form, slid the pen to Asher, then said, “This is all a horrible mistake.”

  “You think it’s a mistake?” Zubik flipped open his folder. “We’ve got dental records confirming the girl found in Florida is not your daughter. We’ve seen the video the impostor sent to your son. Now, we have another video to show you.”

  Asher turned her tablet to Ryan so he could see the footage of him approaching the rural house at Willowind, then taking the canvas from the bed of his truck and burying it.

  “What were you doing at Willowind the day before you reported Maddison missing?” Zubik said. “And why did you fail to tell us about your activity there?”

  Ryan’s Adam’s apple rose and fell as he looked at Zubik then Asher.

  “I drove out to Willowind that morning to see about a contract in the new subdivision. I was behind this large truck, going around a curve when I saw the truck hit the dog. I honked, flashed my lights, but the truck kept going. So I stopped, got out and ran to the dog. It was so badly hurt. I got my canvas from my truck and wrapped the dog, I tried to comfort it. I put my ear to its chest, and there was nothing. The dog died in my arms.

  “So I began knocking on doors to find the owner, but I couldn’t. No one was around. I was upset. I couldn’t just leave it. So I buried it and went on to my meeting with the builder, even though I was late. We didn’t get that particular job, which put my company in a financial bind. I went right to the bank, was turned down for a loan, and then Maddie disappeared. With everything that happened, I completely forgot about the dog.”

  “That’s your story, Ryan?” Zubik said.

  “That’s the truth.”

  “That’s a good story. We believe you, but there’s a problem,” Zubik said.

  Asher then played the video of Ryan pulling Maddie into his pickup truck and striking her. Then they played a clip of one of Ryan’s earlier interviews with the detectives admitting to being violent with his daughter. His voice sounded tinny in the clip.

  “When I got her in the truck she was out of control, kicking the dash, mouthing off about Karen, calling her mother a bitch, and I just lost it and smacked her with the back of my hand, told her to shut the fuck up... I told nobody what happened and Maddie said nothing about it, but I knew I’d crossed the line with her.”

  Zubik stared at Ryan without expression as he rolled up his sleeves.

  “Here’s what we think happened.” Zubik stood, put his hands on the table and leaned into Ryan. “There was a lot of tension in your home with Maddison, with your business. When you and Karen came home from the movie that night, and after the babysitter had left, there was an incident with Maddison in the night. Something got out of hand, something went wrong and Maddie was hurt.”

  “No—”

  “She was hurt so bad she died.”

  “That’s a lie—”

  “Maybe you lost control, Ryan. Maybe it was Karen, or Tyler. But you panicked. You remembered burying the dog the day before, so in the middle of the night you buried Maddison somewhere out there, too, where no one would see you. And if anyone did see you, you could say that you only buried a dog. That’s why you never told us about Willowind, because you didn’t want us looking out there. That’s why your polygraph was inconclusive. Then you came back and set things in motion to make it look like Maddison was abducted. You put the mud streaks in the room, the ladder was in place, you took her phone into the woods, turned it on and off, then destroyed it. Maybe you carried some of her clothes into the woods for a scent, left one of her broken shoelaces.”

  “No, no, that’s all bullshit!”

  “And then this impostor surfaces in Florida, looking just like Maddison. Everyone believes she’s Maddison. You don’t question her identity, and you won’t let us confirm it. You take her in because she’s the perfect cover for your crime.”

  “No, no, you’re twisting everything. You’ve got to find that girl, talk to the people in Florida who got the reward money.”

  “We’re doing all that, Ryan. Got the FBI helping us.”

  Zubik stopped, drew his face even closer to Ryan’s.

  “It must’ve been so hard for you living this lie for all these years. Now’s the time to unburden yourself, be a man and tell the truth. Where is your daughter?”

  Ryan shook his head slowly.

  “Ryan?” Asher’s voice was soft. “Don’t you think you owe Maddie that much?”

  Shaking his head, biting back on his anger, Ryan looked around the room, feeling as if the walls were closing in on him.

  86

  “Just tell us the truth, Karen.”

  Karen refused to believe this was real—that it was happening again.

  After reading Karen her rights, Zubik and Asher spent the next fifteen minutes hammering point after accusatory point into her heart. The fragile crust of whatever was holding her together was disintegrating, and she was losing he
r hold on reality.

  “Karen?” Asher said.

  “No, I don’t believe any of this. It’s all wrong.”

  Zubik and Asher observed her.

  “We’ve seen the dental records, spoken to the dentists,” Asher said.

  “There’s a mix-up, a mistake. Someone gave you the wrong records,” Karen said.

  “There’s no mistake. The girl you took into your home, the girl you took to the dentist, is not Maddison,” Asher said.

  “No, no, it’s Maddie. She’s just overwhelmed. She was struggling to adjust, so she ran away. We have to find her.”

  “Karen,” Asher said.

  “That girl is my daughter!”

  “Karen, she is not your daughter,” Asher said.

  The detectives let a moment pass.

  “It’s time to stop the deception,” Zubik said.

  “Deception?”

  “You’re not telling the truth about what happened that night in your home.” Zubik leaned forward. “Something bad happened to Maddison. Something went horribly wrong, didn’t it?”

  Karen said nothing.

  “Things always seem to go tragically wrong in your life.”

  “What?” Karen’s voice broke.

  “Look at your history,” Zubik said. “Those closest to you have died when you were near.”

  “What’re you saying?”

  “Your sister, Cassie.”

  “That was an accident.”

  “Your mother.”

  “Stop.”

  “And now Maddison.”

  “No, stop.”

  “You were arguing with Maddison, weren’t you? You lost your temper, you snapped and something happened. You just lost it and you struck her. You didn’t mean for it to happen. It was an accident.”

  “Stop.”

  “We found a grave.”

  “Oh God!”

  Asher played the video of Ryan burying something wrapped in canvas in Willowind without revealing to Karen that it was a dog.

  “Ryan took care of it, then planned the abduction story to cover it all up,” Zubik said.

  “Oh my God, no, no, it’s not true.”

  “Then sometime over the years, somewhere along the line, something went wrong, something that threatened to expose everything, leaving you with no choice. You had to do something. Didn’t you?”

  “No!”

  “That’s why you needed an impostor. Maybe you hired her, maybe you had help finding her, but you needed her to ensure that no one would ever suspect the truth—that you hurt your daughter.”

  “No, no, stop!”

  “And it almost worked didn’t it?”

  “Please stop—”

  “And when this impostor emerged in Florida, you welcomed her into your home. Yes, we all believed it was Maddison,” Zubik said. “She looked like Maddison in every way, right down to her birthmark. But ‘looking like’ someone is not proof. Yet you and Ryan were steadfast in your refusal to allow us something as basic as a fingerprint check to confirm she was Maddison because you didn’t want us to know the truth.”

  Karen said nothing.

  “It is a fact, Karen, that the Florida girl is not your daughter. She’s not Maddison,” Zubik continued, “because Maddison was killed in your home, wasn’t she?”

  Still Karen was silent.

  Zubik slammed his palm on the table. “Tell us the truth!”

  Karen’s face went blank, her eyes emptied, she stared at nothing.

  “The truth?” she whispered. “I don’t know what the truth is anymore.”

  87

  Hope.

  Tyler looked into his hands. He was holding Maddison’s pink fabric bracelet with the metal charm that bore the word. Then he returned the gaze of the detectives.

  “Did you kill Maddison?” Asher repeated.

  “That’s a ridiculous question because she’s not dead.”

  “Come on, Tyler. We’ve been over everything, the dental records—”

  “They’re wrong. Some clerk messed up. I told you, and the whole world knows. We found Maddie in Florida, brought her home, she had a hard time getting back into her life after four years. She had a breakdown and just ran away.”

  Zubik took in a long breath then let it out slowly.

  “Why don’t you tell us what really happened that night in your home when you heard voices in Maddison’s room?”

  “I already told you everything.”

  “You told us your mother and sister argued. Did your mother hit your sister? Did your dad lose his temper? Who hurt Maddison that night?”

  Tyler shook his head and rotated the bracelet in his fingers.

  Zubik nodded to Asher, and they played the grave site video for him for the first time. As Tyler watched, his face whitened then went blank.

  “Now,” Zubik said after it ended, “you can see with your own eyes your dad buried something out there. So why don’t you tell us the truth, now?”

  “I don’t know what that video is—” Tyler nodded to Asher’s tablet “—or if it’s even real, but I told you everything I know.”

  “Did you help your mom and dad cover up an accident?”

  Tyler said nothing.

  “You know the truth about what happened that night, don’t you?” Zubik said. “And you know it’s against the law to lie to us.”

  Still, Tyler was silent.

  “Tell us the truth, Tyler. Who killed Maddison and where is she?”

  Tyler kept rotating the bracelet with his fingers and staring at it until tears rolled down his face.

  88

  As the Lanes were being questioned, the search for Maddie’s grave, and for the fugitive who’d assumed her identity, had intensified.

  More investigators had converged at the Willowind site, where the operation had been expanded. Uniformed officers walked shoulder to shoulder, scrutinizing the ground for signs of a burial. More K-9 units had been brought out; maps were being reviewed.

  Police called for more ground-penetrating radar equipment. In some spots soil samples were being tested for disturbance. The Onondaga County helicopter continued its work while aircraft chartered by news teams recorded the operation.

  Across the city, alerts had been issued for the girl who’d claimed to be Maddison Lane. Her picture and description were circulated online and at the airport, the bus terminal, the train station and to the city’s transit and cabdrivers.

  In the Lanes’ neighborhood, officers went door-to-door looking for her, and combed through the woods of Lucifer’s Green, just as they had done four years earlier when the real Maddison Lane had disappeared, said one TV news journalist, reporting live from the scene before throwing to her anchor on the desk as they cut away to a news conference.

  * * *

  Downtown at the Public Safety Building, in the room used for major news events, Captain Eric Flynn took his place at the podium while other law enforcement officials stood behind him.

  On one side of Flynn, an enlarged head-and-shoulders shot of Maddison Lane’s impostor stared from a tripod. On the opposite side were enlarged photos of Maddison Lane at age twelve, and her age-progressed photos. The resemblance with all the photos was remarkable.

  Flynn took stock, estimating upward of seventy news people had packed into the room.

  “We’ll get started,” he said as blazing white light washed over him. Cameras clicked and flashed, and he began by giving a summary of the new developments in the Lane case, which repeated the points in the statement every journalist had received upon arrival.

  “Not long ago the SPD received new information confirming that the individual who’d recently been located in Florida and thought to be Maddison Lane is in fact not Maddison Lane. We are in the process of attempting to identify an
d locate that individual for questioning. We can confirm that Maddison Lane remains a missing person, and the investigation into her disappearance remains open and active. We’re appealing to the public, to anyone with any information on this matter, to contact us. With that, we’ll take a few questions now,” Flynn said, opening the floodgates.

  “Sir, the New York Times has published a leaked video showing Maddison Lane’s father digging and burying something near Willowind. Did you find her remains and do you suspect he killed his daughter?”

  “We’re talking to all members of the Lane family. That is all we can say at this time.”

  “Do your investigators feel duped by the impostor?”

  “No, because at the time the individual had emerged we had no real grounds to question her identity.”

  “But we understand she provided you no information about her whereabouts for the past four years.”

  “Yes, the individual appeared to have suffered trauma and memory loss and was undergoing counseling.”

  “Why wasn’t her identity confirmed in Florida?”

  “Florida officials did collect her fingerprints, but they were lost in a computer malfunction during the post-hurricane period. We must note that her birthmark was absolutely consistent with Maddison Lane’s, and her parents had confirmed her identity, as well. At that stage we all wanted to believe, and did believe, that Maddison Lane had been recovered safely.”

  “How did you determine that the Florida girl was not Maddison?”

  “We had official confirmation that we can’t discuss.”

  “Was it fingerprints, DNA?”

  “We’re not going to discuss that at this time.”

  “What’re you doing to identify the impostor?”

  “We’re analyzing fingerprints we have recently collected and DNA.”

  “We’ve heard the impostor left the family some sort of confession video. Do you have it and did the impostor have a role in Maddison’s disappearance?”

  “We’ve obtained the video, and determining the impostor’s role in the case is part of the investigation. We’re working with Florida law enforcement and the FBI.”