The day our child disapp.., p.36
The Day our Child Disappeared, page 36
“Did your brother know why you were in trouble?” Sally asked.
Peter shook his head. “I only told him it was drug stuff.”
“All right. I have one more question for you. This may not seem to be too relevant to what we’re discussing, but how tall are you?”
“Uh, I’m six foot one; why?”
That was the final piece of information Sally needed. She was now convinced that someone had framed Peter for the kidnapping of Andy Coleman, and she was sure she knew who it was.
24
“I believe you,” Sally said. “You weren’t at the movie theater, but someone was who was doing their best to look like you.”
Peter’s face crumpled into a frown of confusion. “What? You mean … someone was trying to frame me, to make it look like I was the one who kidnapped this kid?”
She nodded. “Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s what happened.”
“Who? And why would they have done this? Why me?” he demanded.
“The same person who’s been manipulating you from the start,” Sally said coolly. “Karl Nordstrom. Why? Well, clearly because you’re a little gullible, Peter, and because you seem to do whatever he tells you without asking too many questions.”
Peter stared at the ground with a sheepish look on his face, his cheeks aglow with embarrassment. “I uh, I guess you’re right about that,” he murmured.
“Don’t think you‘re getting let off the hook, by the way,” Sally said sternly. “Just because you didn’t know you were aiding and abetting a couple of kidnappers, you nonetheless did help them—and you knew you were helping a wanted felon evade justice, even though you thought he was ‘only’ a weed dealer as if that isn’t much of a crime.”
“You hear that, boy?” yelled James, who had been stewing in angry silence throughout the questioning session. “You knew what you were doing was wrong, but you did it anyway! You’re gonna take whatever punishment the law gives you, and you’re gonna take it like a man. If you don’t, whatever they dish out to you is gonna pale in comparison to what I’m gonna give ya, I swear to God!”
“Yes, sir,” Peter murmured, his eyes downcast and his voice barely clearing a whisper.
“I could have a word with the judge and maybe get your sentence reduced to a year of community service, something like that,” Sally said, “if you cooperate fully, and if we can prove you helped French to escape because you only believed he was a weed dealer, not a kidnapper. I’m not making any promises, but I’m just saying I might be able to make things go easier for you if you cooperate fully.”
“I promise you I’ll d-do that, ma’am,” Peter said, staring at Sally with sincerity and conviction in his gaze. “You just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”
“Well, you can start by handing over your phone,” Sally said. “It sounds like you at least have one or two items of evidence on there—the message from Nordstrom telling you to swap trucks with Ebrahim, for example.”
Peter let out a long sigh and shook his head. “I don’t have my phone. Nordstrom told me you guys would use it to track me, so I had to get rid of it. He said the safest thing was to throw it into the river outside town, so I did that.”
“That’s unfortunate,” Sally said. “Without that message, it’s going to be a lot harder to convince a judge that you were manipulated into doing what you did by Nordstrom.”
“Shit … I wish I hadn’t done that,” Peter muttered.
“It’s been done, and there’s nothing we can do about that now,” Sally said. “Hopefully, Ebrahim will be willing to testify that he saw a message from Nordstrom on your phone. That might work in your favor. Is there anything else that you can think of that might help to prove that Nordstrom manipulated you? Any witnesses who could corroborate what you’ve told me, any security cameras that might have captured footage … anything?”
“I … I really don’t know, ma’am,” he said.
“Okay. Well, thank you for cooperating, at least … but I’m going to have to arrest you now and take you in.”
Peter sucked in a long breath and then exhaled slowly as he nodded, an expression of deep sadness and resignation coming over his face. “All right, ma’am. I understand. I’ll come with you. I won’t cause any trouble.”
“You’d better damn well not, boy!” James growled. “And so help me, God, if you ever get yourself involved in anything like this ever again…”
“Trust me, Dad, I won’t,” Peter murmured.
They extinguished the camping lanterns and the fire in the fireplace, then James locked the cabin, and the three of them started the long hike back to the trailhead. While they were walking through the dense darkness of the forest, Sally gave Haxton a call and told him what had happened. She didn’t go into detail about her theory that Nordstrom was one of the masterminds behind the kidnappings and that he had framed Peter Aling; that was a conversation she needed to have in person rather than over the phone.
The hike back to the car was a lot less tense and anxious than the hike to the cabin, but it required a lot more exertion because much of it was uphill. Finally, they reached James’s truck at the trailhead. Sally felt as if it had to be around midnight, and she was relieved that her son was staying at his father’s house tonight. When she checked her phone, though, she saw it was only 9 pm.
“Get in the damn truck,” James growled at his son.
With his head drooping with shame, Peter climbed into the truck, sitting between James and Sally. The long drive back to James’s place was silent and uncomfortable, and when they finally made it back, Sally was extremely relieved to be out of the car.
“You want me to drive him down to the station for you, Detective?” James asked.
“I don’t think that will be necessary, thanks,” Sally said. “You’re going to cooperate, and you’re not going to cause any trouble, are you, Peter?”
“I’m going to cooperate, ma’am,” Peter said sincerely. “I won’t cause no trouble, I promise you that.”
“You’d better not,” James growled, anger still simmering in his eyes. “You’ve already done enough dragging of our family name through the mud.”
“Yes, sir,” Peter murmured, wilting in the face of his father’s wrath. He was sobering up now and feeling a sense of guilt and shame more intensely than ever.
“Thank you so much for your help,” Sally said to James as she helped Peter, who she kept handcuffed, with his wrists behind his back, into the back of her car. “It would have been much more difficult to find that cabin without you.”
James shook his head and let out a long sigh. “I’m happy to have helped, Detective, but I just wish I hadn’t had to go there to pick up my son for yet another felony charge. If that boy doesn’t straighten himself out after this…” he growled wordlessly and balled his hands into fists at his sides.
“Don’t worry, James, I think this time he may have learned his lesson. Thanks again.”
Sally and Peter drove into the city to the police station in silence, and when she finally handed him over to some of her fellow officers for processing, a wave of intense exhaustion and weariness crashed against her. For the last few hours, it felt as if she had been running off adrenalin alone, having barely had a bite to eat or a drop to drink since before lunch. Now she could finally go home and rest.
Haxton was at the police station when she brought Peter Aling in, and Sally chatted briefly with him about her theory that Nordstrom was one of the masterminds behind the kidnapping.
“I don’t know about that, Sally,” Haxton said doubtfully. “But you’ve been right about stranger things before, so I’m not gonna write it off. So what should we do, bring him in for questioning?”
“He’s very sly and very crafty, and I think we need to get some solid evidence lined up before we bring him in,” Sally said. “Right now, all we’ve got is Aling’s word against his, which isn’t going to hold up in court. We also need to keep Aling’s arrest secret for now; if Nordstrom knows we’ve got Aling, he’ll quickly figure out that Aling will spill the beans about him. That’ll either get him on the run, or it’ll mean that he hides the kids somewhere we’ll never find them. No, right now, we need to quietly, subtly investigate Nordstrom and make him think that we’re still looking for Aling.”
“Yeah, I think that’s the best way to go about this,” Haxton said. “We’ll start first thing in the morning; I think we both need a good, long rest at this point.”
“I agree,” Sally said. “I’m beat. I’ll see you first thing tomorrow, Gareth.”
Sally left the station, got into her car, and set off to drive home. She was so tired that she pretty much went on autopilot, barely able to concentrate properly on the drive.
And thus, she didn’t notice that a car started following her and stuck on her tail for a few miles … and she also didn’t notice until it was too late when a pair of bright headlights appeared out of nowhere to her right, when a truck came blasting out of a side street at speed, hurtling directly toward her.
She was barely able to slam on her brakes, yank on her steering wheel, and let out a scream of terror before the truck T-boned her.
There was an explosive impact, a burst of blinding light behind her eyes accompanied by a percussive bang and the sickening sounds of twisting steel and shattering glass … and then everything went black.
25
“Ma’am, are you okay? Can you hear me? Are you okay? Say something, ma’am; say something!”
Sally groaned as she opened her eyes. Her head was throbbing with a sharp ache, and her mouth was filled with the metallic taste of blood. She found herself swimming in a sense of intense confusion and disorientation, and she had no idea where she was, what had happened, or how she had gotten there.
A stranger was yelling in her ear—he sounded traumatized. She still couldn’t figure out what was going on, only that she was in her car. The airbag had been activated, and its gray mass in front of her face was all she could see. She reached down with trembling hands, fumbling to undo her seatbelt, and she felt broken chunks of window glass all over her lap.
“Ma’am, can you hear me?”
“I … what happened?” Sally managed to groan.
“Thank God. Thank God you’re alive!” the man said. “Hold tight, okay, don’t move … an ambulance is on the way. And so are the cops. Just hang in there; the ambulance is on its way.”
“Who … are you?” Sally croaked, turning her head to look up at the man.
She saw that he was an elderly black man, attired in a security guard’s uniform. The gleaming, polished steel of a revolver in his hand caught her eye, and she noticed a subtle wisp of smoke curling from the barrel—the gun had recently been fired.
“I’m your guardian angel, ma’am, I’d say!” he said, smiling. “God must have put me here tonight to save your life!”
“I … don’t understand,” Sally groaned.
“Some car—a big truck—it just came blasting outta nowhere and T-boned you bad. I saw the whole thing from across the street there, where I was walking home from my shift at the jewelry store in the mall. I had to stay late today, y’see, because the owners was getting new stock in. They always do it late after hours, you know, to lower the chance of getting robbed. And that’s why I say I gotta be your guardian angel, sent by the Lord above himself! If this had happened on any other day but today, I wouldn’t have been out this late, and you’d be dead right now.”
“I still … don’t understand,” Sally said.
“Well, after the guy in the truck plowed into you, another guy jumped out of the truck with a shotgun in his hands. He was running around to the front of your car, looking like he was gonna blast you with that shotgun right through the windshield. I didn’t even think; I just reacted; I whipped out my trusty .38 and started shooting. I don’t think I hit the bastard, but I did scare him off before he could pump you full of buckshot! He jumped back into the truck, and they high-tailed it outta here while I emptied my revolver at ‘em.”
Sally was still awash with confusion, but she understood that this stranger had saved her life from what appeared to be an assassination attempt. “Th-thank you,” she managed to croak. “Thank you … so much, sir.”
He placed a hand on her shoulder and gave it a gentle, reassuring squeeze. “I’m just glad I prevented a murder tonight. Praise the Lord, ma’am, praise His name!”
“Praise the Lord, and thank you, sir … thank you,” Sally murmured, and her sentiment was genuine. Her mind was starting to become more lucid now, and goose bumps tingled all across her body as she realized just how close she had come to dying. Or, rather, to being murdered.
It was no coincidence that this had happened right after she had brought Aling in. Aling was the key to establishing Nordstrom’s guilt, and clearly, Nordstrom was a far more dangerous and ruthless man than she had realized.
The wail of sirens, faint in the distance a few moments ago, became steadily louder, and soon Sally could see them flashing their bright blue and red luminescence through the night.
“They’re coming down the street now, ma’am. I can see ‘em; they’re almost here!” the security guard said. “You’re gonna be okay. Everything’s gonna be all right.”
Following an extensive checkup in the hospital, Sally was discharged after a few hours. She had a few bruises and lacerations and a minor concussion but no broken bones or internal wounds. The doctor who examined her said she had been lucky. If the truck had hit her car a few inches to the right, or at a slightly higher speed or at more of an angle, her injuries would have been a lot worse, and indeed, the initial impact could have been fatal.
Haxton, who had arrived on the scene and questioned the elderly security guard, waited in the hospital for the doctors to finish examining Sally and then drove her home when she was discharged.
“You’re welcome to stay at my place, Sally,” Haxton said as they left the hotel parking lot. “My wife loves you, and we’ve got two spare beds now that the kids are away at college.”
“Thanks for the offer, Gareth,” Sally said, “but I’ll be okay on my own.”
“Sally, someone tried to kill you a couple hours ago,” Haxton said, his usual abrasive tone replaced by one that was far gentler and more sympathetic. “Are you sure you’re gonna okay on your own?”
“I refuse to let these scumbags intimidate me,” she said resolutely.
“Well, I’m gonna get some men to stay outside your place all night,” Gareth said. “You’ll be protected … but I still think you’d feel safer at my house.”
“I really do appreciate the offer,” Sally said, “but trust me, I’ll be okay.”
“All right. Just know that my door is always open for ya, Sally,” he said. “And I’ll make sure there’s a unit outside your house every night from now until this case is closed, and whoever is behind the kidnappings—”
“Nordstrom is behind them,” Sally said confidently. “I’m absolutely certain of it.”
“You think? I mean, he was at his business when Andy Coleman was abducted; we have irrefutable evidence of that, so there’s no way we can link him to that kidnapping. As for the others, I suspect he’s got some sort of solid alibi, too. I don’t know, Sally, I just wasn’t picking up any sort of a guilty vibe from the guy, none at all.”
“Well, I was,” Sally said, “and I’m pretty damn sure it was him who almost put a hole through my chest with a shotgun earlier.”
“We’ll look into that, don’t worry,” Haxton said. “But don’t convince yourself of anything before we have the evidence to back it up … as a veteran detective, you should know this as well as I do.”
“All right, Gareth, okay,” Sally said wearily. A wave of sheer exhaustion had just crashed against her, and she was in no mood to be arguing now. All she wanted to do was get home and sleep.
While they drove, Haxton arranged for some cops to be stationed outside her house, and a cruiser with two men in it was already parked in her drive when they arrived. Grateful for the protection, Sally thanked Haxton again, then went over to the cops in the cruiser and thanked them for their help. After that, she stumbled inside, had a quick shower, and then flopped into bed, passing out moments after her head hit the pillow.
She felt as if she had barely slept when the piercing clamor of her alarm clock jolted her out of her deep, dreamless sleep.
“The concussion probably helped with that,” Sally groaned as she struggled to get out of bed.
After she had woken up, she called her ex-husband and spoke to Derek. Although she desperately wished to be with her son, she figured it would be safer for him if he continued to stay with his father for a while, at least until she had this case wrapped up and Nordstrom behind bars. If Nordstrom was willing to kill her as well as kidnap children, she guessed that he would be willing to murder an innocent child, too.
“I’ll come to see you after school, okay, pumpkin?” she said to her son on the phone. “We’ll hang out later.”
Both Derek and his father were okay with him staying there a while longer, and that brought Sally a measure of relief. After talking to them, she immediately called Haxton.
“How are you feeling this morning?” Haxton asked.
“Like I’ve been hit by a bus,” she answered. “Aside from that, I guess I’m okay.”
“Hit by a black Ford F-150, actually,” Haxton said. “At least that’s what the witness told us. And we did find a piece of broken headlamp at the scene that matches the Ford F-150 part, and there’s black paint all over your car in the impact zone, so I’m pretty sure he’s right.”
“Have you found the truck?”
“We’ve had an APB out on the vehicle since the incident,” Haxton said, “but we haven’t found anything yet. The security guard said it had no license plates on it, so I think it’s safe to assume that unless we get really lucky, we’re not gonna find it.”
