Missing Daughter

by Rick Mofina

  Nothing was.

  The search continued downriver for miles.

  * * *

  Dalton and Cole Lane had been charged with obstruction of justice.

  More charges were coming, pending further investigation.

  After they were processed and had made their respective court appearances, they were granted bail.

  The investigation led Zubik and Asher to reinterview Jill Lane for more details of that night. Jill knew nothing of Dalton’s and Cole’s acts, reiterating how when Dalton missed his curfew, she’d driven into the night looking for him in vain.

  The investigators still hadn’t located the impostor, Maya Starr Gagnon. No new aspects of the case had emerged from Florida.

  But Zubik and Asher had tracked down and arrested the others who were involved in Maddie’s disappearance: Donnie Slade, his older brother Lennie, but not their friend George Street, who had been killed in a motorcycle crash the previous year. The Slade brothers were also charged with obstruction for lying in their statements and interviews with investigators, and concealing evidence about Maddie’s disappearance.

  But as with the Lanes, additional and more serious charges were also coming for the Slades.

  Lorenzo Bartucci at the DA’s office was working on it, putting in long hours every day. He was wrestling with a complicated case, given the circumstances and the ages of the victim and the others at the time. Certainly for Dalton and the Slades, there were grounds for charges related to kidnapping, possible criminal sexual acts and for causing the death of a person under the age of fourteen in the course of committing other specified crimes. He was building a case for second-degree murder with a sentence of life, or at least twenty-five years, in prison.

  But considering how this case had evolved, with its twists and turns, Bartucci needed it to be rock-solid. And it wasn’t. Not to his way of thinking. Compounding the challenge, in his view, was the fact that so far no body had been recovered, which, at this stage could render much of the case circumstantial.

  * * *

  The story was back in the national spotlight.

  Again.

  This time reporters eviscerated the Lane family’s troubled history, generating a social media storm. People across the country and around the world pilloried the family as criminal frauds who had murdered a twelve-year-old child.

  Others were sympathetic.

  “This is a horrible tragedy, and our hearts are broken all over again for Maddie and her family,” Maddie’s friend Amanda Morber said.

  A national TV network had interviewed Amanda during a candlelight memorial for Maddie at the Ruby Green Community Hall. It was the same building that had become the official search center when Maddie first went missing; the same building that held the celebration when everyone believed Maddie had been found. Now, it was the place where those who loved her had come to remember her in death.

  Again, large photos of Maddie at age twelve were displayed.

  “I just can’t believe this,” Maddie’s friend Nicole Webb sobbed before the camera. “My heart goes out to her family for what they’ve been through. They’re absolutely shattered and I pray for them.”

  News cameras recorded Ryan, Karen and Tyler supporting each other as they walked the few blocks from their home to Lime Tree Street and the community hall to take part in the service.

  The flickering flames of the candles they held lit their grief-stricken faces. Karen and Tyler were too distraught to address the gathering.

  They went to the makeshift podium where Ryan struggled but managed a few pain-filled words.

  “Thank you for your love and for your support,” he said. “We pray that Maddie is at peace in Heaven and making God smile.”

  During the service, Tyler’s free hand was pulled into a fist.

  From time to time he opened it. He was holding the bracelet he’d given Maddie upon her return. In the candlelight the small gold metal charm glittered with one word:

  Hope.

  93

  Lewis Perez didn’t move as fast as he used to.

  At seventy-three, Perez, a Vietnam War veteran—Private First Class Infantry—seemed to discover a new ache every morning he took Buster, his beagle, for their morning walk.

  They strolled through their quiet section of Syracuse, slivered between the neighborhoods of the Southside and the Near West Side, a community where life was not easy. Most folks struggled to get by, like Perez who survived on a fixed income.

  It saddened him too that so many people he’d known had died over the years. Like Sonja, whose house they were nearing. Sonja had died, oh so many years back. Was it three, no, four now? She was a lovely woman who always came out to her porch or the sidewalk to gossip, always had a treat in her pocket for Buster. He still wagged his tail every time they passed her place, expecting to see her and get a treat.

  This morning was no different.

  Only this time he kept barking and pulling harder than usual.

  “What’s gotten into you, Buster? You know Sonja’s not there anymore.”

  She had lived in her house with her grown son, and it was a shame how he’d let the place go after his mother’s death, Perez thought as he felt the tension on Buster’s worn old leash tighten before it snapped and the dog ran onto the property. He’d never run into the yard before.

  “Jeez! Buster, get back here!”

  The dog bolted to front the porch, barked at the door, then ran around to the side of the house. That cheerful, short-haired hound was good company, but he was also very nosy.

  Perez started after him, assessing the old two-story wooden house. It was an American Foursquare, a style built in the 1920s, with a full front porch and a roof that had a central dormer.

  But it was falling apart.

  The yard was overgrown, shingles were missing from the roof, paint peeled and blistered along the walls, some of the exterior shutters had slipped from their mountings and the glass in a few of the windows had fractured. The mailbox was jammed with flyers.

  Yes, a damn shame Sonja’s son had let it go. Perez sighed as he walked along the driveway, looking at the dilapidated garage set back in Sonja’s deep, narrow lot. A tired-looking, rusting sedan was parked in front of the garage. Buster was barking and scratching at the side door of the house, when suddenly his weight pushed it open and he vanished inside.

  “Buster! Get back here! That’s an order!”

  Perez got to the door and called again. No sign of him, but the side door creaked open wider as if inviting Perez to enter.

  He recoiled when a wave of air carrying the stench of human waste and garbage greeted him as he stepped into the side entrance. Not good, Perez thought, covering his nose and breathing through his mouth.

  “Hello? Buster?”

  He came to the kitchen first where flies strafed the unwashed dishes piled in the sink. The table was heaped with newspapers and fast-food containers. He moved to the dining room, glanced at the spiders, wriggling along their webs on the windows and the hutch. In the living room he saw piles of empty soda cans, stacks of stuffed plastic garbage bags, then one, two, three mice scurried across the stained, worn area rug.

  Something above him creaked, and he heard a faint bark.

  “Hello! Anyone home? Buster!”

  Perez found the stairs and climbed to the second floor.

  The stench grew even more penetrating as he came to the first bedroom still holding his nose and breathing through his mouth.

  Towers of sagging cardboard boxes with the word Mother scrawled on them teetered along one wall. Beyond that, the room was empty.

  In the second bedroom he found clothes heaped on the bed, shoes lined around it. Otherwise the room was empty.

  The bathroom: empty.

  Then he heard the scratching of Buster’s claws on hardwood, panting and
barking, drawing him to the next bedroom.

  Perez froze.

  He saw an overturned wooden chair, then a corpse above it hanging from a rope affixed to a hook screwed into the top of the door frame.

  Its wide eyes stared down at him.

  Jolted, Perez stepped back in shock. The gagging stench forced him to press his hand harder over his nose and mouth, and he mentally recited a prayer. Man, this was so sad.

  It was Sonja’s son. Perez struggled to remember his name.

  Bennie.

  In his life, Perez had seen death in all its forms. He figured Bennie had been dead for a long time. He was no expert, but he guessed maybe a week or so.

  This must’ve been what had Buster so curious. All right, keep calm. Perez knew what to do. Don’t touch anything. Call police. He slid his free hand into his pocket for his phone when he heard a faint cry from lower in the house.

  Buster barked and darted down the stairs.

  Perez went after him, guided by the sound of Buster’s barking. He’d returned to the kitchen and closed a pantry door, which, when open, had blocked the door to the basement.

  “What the hell?”

  The basement door was barricaded. Steel brackets bolted to the frame held a section of standard two-by-four-inch board. The length blocked the door from opening, sealing whatever was down there.

  Buster was barking and scratching.

  Perez considered options—number one: calling police and waiting for them. Perez bit his lip. He wasn’t afraid; he wasn’t stupid. But he was, like Buster, inquisitive. He needed a weapon to defend himself. Thinking, he glanced around, opened a utensil drawer and selected a meat cleaver. Then he lifted the two-by-four and opened the door to the yawning, stinking darkness.

  Buster yipped and ran fearlessly down the stairs into the black.

  “Hello down there?” Perez called while searching for a light switch.

  The sound of a chain moving made the little hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

  Buster was growling.

  Perez fumbled for his phone and used its flashlight. The first step creaked as he stepped on it.

  “Who’s down there?”

  A chain moved again.

  Buster was panting and making nervous yips.

  The light from Perez’s phone found a workbench, a furnace, shelves with jars and jars of what might’ve been jam or preserves, discarded trunks, food wrappers, empty water bottles, then stacks and stacks of pizza boxes.

  The windows were painted black and secured with metal bars.

  Perez’s light found a portable toilet then another bucket, a mattress and the chain he had heard. He followed chain to a human ankle. In the light he saw Buster’s eyes reflected—then a second pair of eyes.

  They belonged to a girl who was hugging Buster and whimpering, trembling.

  “Dear Jesus,” Perez said.

  The girl was sobbing softly and trembling.

  “Help me, please help me. My name is Maddie.”

  EPILOGUE

  Three Syracuse patrol cars converged on the house.

  An ambulance rushed Maddie to the hospital where she was admitted through emergency. Zubik and Asher waited in the hall to interview her as she underwent several tests, including a DNA swab, then a rape-kit exam conducted by a female nurse.

  Doctors found that Maddie had been sexually assaulted.

  They compared her DNA with that of the dead man found in the house to determine if he, as most believed, was her attacker. The medical team’s examination had also determined that Maddie was emotionally distraught, emaciated, malnourished and dehydrated.

  “But remarkably, her vital signs are good. We’ll run an IV and feed her intravenously for a short time,” Dr. Olivia West informed the detectives as she uncollared her stethoscope. “You can go in and talk to her. You’ll have a little time before we give her a sedative.”

  Despite her weakened state, Maddie managed to tell the detectives everything; how she’d fought with Karen, how she’d had a secret sexting relationship with Dalton, how she’d wanted to go to the party and how things went horribly out of control with the other boys and how Dalton had tried to intervene.

  She stopped often to sip water because her throat was dry.

  Maddie recounted how she escaped back to the highway and how miraculously Bennie, the pizza guy, was in the car that stopped. She was so relieved because she knew him.

  After telling him everything, Bennie said he would protect her from the bad boys, and the best way to do it was for Maddie to spend the night at his house. Bennie didn’t want to take her home because it was so late and her parents would freak out. He said he could take her home in the morning and help her explain. Maddie didn’t want that. She screamed, demanded Bennie take her home, but he hit her and she lost consciousness. When she woke up, she was chained to a mattress in his basement.

  The next morning Bennie had told Maddie that her case had turned into such a big deal that he could never take her home because he’d go to prison. Maddie cried her heart out, begging and pleading. Bennie cried, too. He said that ever since his mother died he was so lonely in the house that he decided he would keep Maddie to be his forever-friend. During her time in captivity, he fed her, gave her books to read, even a big dictionary and encyclopedias. Maddie tried to educate herself by reading them all, and the whole time, even when Bennie did terrible things to her, she begged and pleaded for him to take her home every day, saying how she ached to be with her family again. Sometimes she felt that she had died and her basement prison was hell. Sometimes she would relive the details of that horrible night in her mind over and over.

  Maddie said it felt like a week since Bennie had last visited with her. Before that he’d seemed so sad all the time. He complained that he had headaches and would sit in front of her mumbling how his dead mother was calling him to be with her. Just babbling and not making sense. He kept holding his head, finally telling her that he was going away for a while. He left her some extra water and food and was gone.

  When the detectives told Maddie that Bennie was dead, she stared at them without an expression.

  “He was my only link to the world. I don’t know what I feel, or if I feel anything at all for him,” she said.

  * * *

  “Let me see my daughter now!” Karen Lane’s anguished voice echoed down the hospital corridor.

  Upon leaving Maddie’s room, Zubik and Asher saw half a dozen uniformed officers and medical staff contending with her overwrought family. Dr. West waved for the detectives to join her as she guided Karen, Ryan and Tyler into an empty office. Then as the doctor gave the family a sensitive but accurate assessment of Maddie, including the most horrific aspects, Karen sobbed and Ryan and Tyler held her.

  “But she survived,” West said. “And given all that time, all she’s endured, she’s in good condition. With care and counseling, Maddison will recover.”

  West said that when Maddie woke in a couple of hours her family could see her.

  During that time, Zubik and Asher summarized some of what Maddie had told them. And this time around, they would compare her DNA with the DNA they’d collected from Maddie’s hairbrush in her room four years ago, to confirm what everyone knew to be true—that this was the real Maddie.

  It seemed like a lifetime had passed before a nurse informed the Lanes, “She just woke. We’ll give it five minutes, then you can see her.”

  When they went into Maddie’s room, they were thunderstruck.

  The person sitting up in the bed was much bigger, older and different from the Maddie they’d known. It was if they were staring at a ghost, someone who had come back from the dead. They approached her in wondrous disbelief.

  Maddie’s smile was watery but bright when she saw them. “Mom, Dad, Tyler...”

  “Is it really you, honey?
” Karen touched Maddie’s hands, her arms, shoulders, her cheeks, to confirm she was actually real.

  “Yes, Mom, it’s me.”

  Ryan stared in amazement, his eyes scanning her as if to assure himself she was not an illusion.

  “I missed you so much,” Tyler said.

  Maddie slowly raised her open arms, and they moved toward her gently in a tearful group embrace.

  “I never thought this day would come,” Maddie sobbed. “I prayed for it, but I never thought it would come. I thought I was going to die in that basement.”

  Tyler wiped his tears.

  “I never stopped hoping we’d see you again,” he said, reaching into his pocket and tenderly pulling out the pink fabric bracelet he bought for this moment.

  “This is for you.”

  Maddie accepted it and rubbed her fingers over the gold metal Hope charm.

  She slid the bracelet on and continued hugging her brother, her mother and father as tight and for as long as she could.

  * * *

  Crimes had been committed. But the Lane case was fraught with complexities, and the judges involved had to look closely at all aspects.

  Because of Dalton Lane’s age at the time of the offence, the presiding family court judge considered the context and Dalton’s acceptance of responsibility and remorse for his actions. Through his lawyer, Dalton had entered into an agreement with the district attorney and pleaded guilty to obstruction. The judge approved and consequently sentenced Dalton to ninety days in a nonsecure juvenile detention facility, a youth group home, along with one year of probation.

  In his case, Cole Lane and his attorney also entered into a plea agreement approved by the judge.

  Cole took responsibility for his actions and expressed profound remorse as he pleaded guilty to obstruction. The court considered all the elements at play at the time of the offence as well as Cole’s character. He was an outstanding citizen with no criminal history, a former law enforcement officer and decorated soldier who made an extraordinary sacrifice saving lives in the protection of the country, and overcame Herculean challenges as a result.