Pieces of her, p.5
Pieces of Her, page 5
“This is about an active kidnapping case right here in town. A child’s life is in grave and immediate danger, and I need an immediate response. And if you hang up on me, I’ll have your badge. The call logs will have this call, of which I’ve made an exact note of the time, and you can bet your ass that I’ll take this as far as it needs to go if you don’t put Calhoun on the line now. This is … Jim Irons.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Finally, the cop spoke. “We don’t have any active kidnapping cases here, Irons,” he said snarkily. “And if you wanna fight about phone calls, sure, go ahead, I’ll charge you for wasting police time, which I’m sure you’re aware, as an ex-police officer, is a felony.”
“Dammit, you stupid moron,” Jim growled, his teeth chattering, “stop jerking me around and put me through to Calhoun! Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you? I have irrefutable proof that Keith Young, who you do have as an active missing child case, was kidnapped! He didn’t wander off like you idiots think he did. He was kidnapped! You hear me, asshole? I have proof, evidence, and plenty of it! Now quit wasting my time—and that poor boy’s time, which is running out as we speak—and put me through to Calhoun!”
“Calhoun isn’t in today,” the man said coldly. “You can call 9-1-1 and—”
“No!” Jim yelled. “You’re not gonna fob me off like that. Dammit, you prick, I swear to God I’ll have your badge for jerking me around like this. Who’s in then, huh? Is Lieutenant Frey in? Put me through to him, or I’m taking this time-wasting bullshit to the press. You want that? You want a media shitstorm on your doorstep about how this department doesn’t give a shit about a kidnapped child? Because that’s what you’re going to have if you keep this crap up. Now put me through to Frey, or whoever’s in charge there!”
Again there was a long pause, but then there was a beep as the police officer finally gave in and put Jim through to Calhoun’s second-in-command, Lieutenant William Frey.
Jim couldn’t help but clench his jaw when he heard Frey’s voice on the other end of the line. Frey was one of the men who had conspired against Jim and who had concocted the false charges that had resulted in Jim’s firing from the force and the ruining of his reputation. Frey had attacked Jim with such virulence precisely because he was one of the dirty cops Jim had tried to take down; he was deep in the pocket of a local mob boss, and Jim also knew that Frey had his multiple fingers in other illegal pies: drug smuggling and a ring of prostitutes. Jim had sworn that he wouldn’t rest until Frey, Calhoun, and the other corrupt cops who had ruined his life had been brought to justice, but right now, for the sake of Keith’s life, he had to work with them, however odious a prospect that was.
“What the hell do you want, Irons?” Frey growled. “You’ve got some nerve calling me up after everything that happened.”
There were a lot of choice words Jim wanted to say to his former commanding officer, but he bit his tongue. Now was not the time for vengeance or anger, however, justified. He had to save Keith.
“The missing kid, he’s been kidnapped, Frey. I have absolutely irrefutable evidence of this. And I need the department to get in on this case. I can’t find him without your resources.”
Frey sighed on the other end of the line, and Jim could just picture him rolling his eyes. This increased his already-boiling fury, but he managed to keep his temper in check and restrained himself from unleashing a torrent of abuse.
“Look, Irons, we’ve already investigated the case thoroughly, and we came to the conclusion that the boy wandered off and got lost,” Frey said in an annoyed, impatient tone. “You were always one for conspiracies, weren’t you? I see that nothing has changed. Well—”
“Are you deaf or just stupid, you fucking moron?” Jim blurted out. He couldn’t hold back any longer. “I just told you I’ve got irrefutable evidence that a child has been kidnapped, and I’m on the cusp of finding out where the boy is, too! Now, unless you want egg all over your ugly face when I go to press about how you refused to help me in the face of overwhelming evidence, you’re gonna shut up and listen to what I have to say, and then you’re gonna get your useless ass into gear and get people out here! All your favorite journalists will have a field day with what I’ve got to show them if you don’t start taking this case seriously, Frey, I promise you that. You ignore me now, and I swear to God the instant we end this call, I’m gonna phone up every single news station in a fifty-mile radius. How does that sound?”
Jim could hear a cold fury in Frey’s voice when he responded, but this only served to put a smile on his face; he knew that Frey had no choice but to help him. The department had already had more than its fair share of bad press in recent years, and they couldn’t afford another media scandal. His head, as well as Calhoun’s and a few others, would surely roll.
“Fine,” Frey muttered. “Go ahead, tell me what you’ve got.”
Jim explained everything he’d discovered so far, right up to the forgotten tunnels and the secret entrance to them.
“All right,” Frey said, “well, I guess I have no choice but to switch it to a kidnapping case. And I’ll get a team from the diving unit to check out those flooded tunnels later. But there’s an important detail I think you’ve forgotten about in all this eagerness of yours.”
“Oh yeah, and what’s that?” Jim asked gruffly.
“Now that this is officially a kidnapping case, if you keep sticking your nose in it, you’ll be interfering with police business. So go back to chasing unfaithful wives and messing around with will-altering and whatever other bullshit you scrape pennies together with these days. You’re off this case now, Irons. And if I catch you messing around with this case from this point on, you can bet your ass I’ll throw the book at you as hard as I fucking can. You’re off this case—so get your ass back home and don’t let me catch you near any crime scenes again.”
10
The anger bubbling in Jim’s core kept him warm against the freezing state he was in with his soaked clothes on the long hike through the woods back to his car. He was relieved that the police were finally taking this seriously but filled with wrath at the fact that Frey had kicked him off the case.
Of course, he could go on investigating the case on his own—there was nothing Frey could legally do to stop him—but he knew that he wasn’t allowed on any official crime scenes, which would add a layer of difficulty to his task. At least, he reasoned, he still had Christina on the inside to slip him information and tips under the table.
He was shivering like a leaf in a gale by the time he got back to his car, and it was a great relief to get the heater going, although it only went a little way toward pulling some of the icy cold out of his flesh and bones. As soon as he got home, he filled up the bathtub and soaked in hot water for a long while until he’d got his core temperature back up to normal.
After that, he got busy cleaning and fixing up things the kidnapper had broken, messed up, or vandalized. He got a call from Andrew in the afternoon, and his friend sounded terribly anguished, which was to be expected, seeing as this was the fourth day of his son’s disappearance. Jim reassured Andrew that he was closer than ever to cracking the case and told him that now that the police were taking it seriously and had acknowledged that it was a kidnapping, the chances of finding Keith and the man who had taken him were better than ever.
This news didn’t lighten Andrew’s mood much, though, and he remained in a state of despair. Jim could understand that; if Felicity were missing, he knew he wouldn’t be able to rest or think a single positive thought until she was back safely in his arms.
Even so, at this moment, there wasn’t much he could do, at least not until police divers explored the tunnels—and that could take hours, although it was far more likely that it would take days. He wanted to go through the old case files and news reports from 1991 again, for he had a feeling that there was something he might have previously overlooked in them.
Doing his best to keep his feelings of frustration at bay, he sat down at his desk, grabbed the files, and started to go through everything one more time with a fine-toothed comb.
“There has to be something I’ve missed, something I’ve skimmed over that’ll link these two cases and prove it’s the same guy,” Jim murmured as he plowed through the stacks of papers on his desk. “And something that’ll just allow me to paint even a vague picture of who he might be.”
After three hours, though, with his eyes weary from the strain of reading, he came up with nothing. The 1991 cases remained as mysterious now as they had been all those years ago. Jim’s theory that the same man was behind this, though, remained unchanged. He was absolutely sure the very same kidnapper was at work again.
“Microfiche,” he murmured to himself. “Yes, yes, microfiche! That’s what I need to do. I’ve been focusing so intensely on the stuff in the police files that I’ve neglected to look elsewhere. And I’m sure there’s something, somewhere, that’ll point me in the right direction.”
He checked his watch—the archives would still be open for another hour. He grabbed his coat, charged out of his house and scrambled into his car, then raced downtown. He got to the archives with half an hour to go before closing time, which wasn’t much, but it was something, at least.
He got some microfiches of the local daily newspaper, as many issues as he could find from 1991. Then, acutely aware of the clock ticking in the background, he began his research. He started right at the beginning of the year, even though the kidnappings had taken place at the end of the year. He flipped through the pages of every newspaper, keenly scanning the headline of every article, large or small.
Soon enough, he was completely lost in work and had totally lost track of time. A gentle tap on his shoulder pulled him out of this trance of concentration.
“I’m sorry, sir, but we’re closing in two minutes,” the archivist, a friendly woman in her sixties, said to him. “You’re going to have to come back tomorrow and finish whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Two minutes, you said?” he said without looking up from the pages.
“Yes, two minutes.”
“Then give me two minutes, please. Just two more minutes.”
She rolled her eyes and sighed but gave in. “All right, two more minutes, but not a second longer. You have to leave after that, or I’m going to have to call security.”
“Thanks.”
He carried on flipping through the pages of the local paper, now immensely conscious of the seconds ticking away. With increasing frustration, he read headline after headline, finding nothing. Finally, he heard the archivist’s footsteps shuffling across the floor toward him, and he knew his time was up.
Just as she reached him, though, something caught his eye.
“Sir, you really do need to leave now,” she said.
“Wait!”
“Sir, I’m only going to ask once more, and then I’m going to have no choice but to call security.”
“Almost, almost,” he murmured, mostly to himself as he hastily read through the article that had caught his eye. “Please, one more minute….”
The woman sighed and walked over to a nearby intercom. “Bob? I’m going to need some help here. There’s a guy who’s refusing to leave.”
A large, burly man came stomping through the building with a dark scowl on his face. “Sir,” he said gruffly when he got to Jim, “you’re seriously going to have to leave now. I ain’t playing around. Don’t make me throw you out of here. Just get up and go. No ifs, no buts. Leave now.”
Jim raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “It’s okay. I’m going, just relax.”
He got up and left, for he had found the nugget he’d been hoping to discover. In late January 91, he’d found a letter written by a reader, buried deep in an issue of the daily newspaper. The headline of the letter was telling: Mother Warns of Danger to Children.
He hadn’t been able to read the whole letter, but in it, a woman claimed a man had tried to abduct her son from a park. From the details Jim had been able to skim from the letter, the boy sounded eerily similar to Keith—he was the same age. His mother described him as being headstrong and filled with curiosity. The same qualities had led Keith to wander away from his father and end up getting kidnapped.
In her letter to the newspaper, the mother—Helen Devries—had warned other parents to keep a close eye on their young children in public places.
There was no way to be sure that the man who had tried to abduct Helen’s son was the same one who had kidnapped the other children later in the year, but Jim was sure that this was no mere coincidence.
He called Christina and told her what he’d discovered and asked if she could get him some details on any people in this county named Helen Devries who were between the ages of fifty and seventy.
Sitting in his car, he tapped his fingers restlessly on the steering wheel while waiting for Christina to call him back. It took forever, but finally, his phone rang. He answered with eager haste.
“What have you got for me, Christina?”
“Well, the good news is that there’s only one Helen Devries in the county,” Christina said.
Jim could tell from her tone, though, that the bad news was worse than the good. “All right, so hit me with the bad news then,” he said warily.
“The bad news, Jim, is that she’s been dead for the last fifteen years.”
11
“Shit,” Jim muttered. “Hold on, though, what about her family? Were you able to get any details on them? I know she’s at least got one son.”
“She had two children, and they’re both still alive, according to the records,” Christina answered. “So that’s good news.”
Jim breathed out a sigh of relief. “All right, that’s good. In fact, that’s even better. If I can speak to the one who was almost abducted, we might start getting somewhere. Do you have names, contact numbers, last known addresses?”
“Just last known addresses. The older kid is Jasper Devries, who’s thirty-eight now.”
“He’s the one—he would have been eight years old in 91. Address?”
Christina gave Jim the address, and he thanked her for her help and hastily punched it into Google Maps, which informed him that it was a house in the eastern suburbs of the town. Jim drove straight there and found that Jasper Devries lived in a neat and pleasant suburban home. A kid’s trike and a couple of colorful balls in the driveway told him that Jasper now had kids of his own.
Jim walked up to the front door and knocked on it, and a mousy woman in her thirties answered it with a wary look on her face. “Yes? Can I help you?”
“I’m sorry for bothering you, ma’am,” Jim said, “but I’m looking for a Jasper Devries. Does he live here?”
“Jasper’s my husband,” she said in a standoffish manner. “Why are you looking for him? Who are you?”
“I’m a private investigator. My name is Jim Irons,” he said. “Don’t worry, my investigation has nothing to do with you or your family. I believe that something that happened to your husband as a child might be connected to a case I’m investigating, though.”
The woman looked him up and down with the gleam of suspicion shining in her eyes, but eventually, she nodded, telling Jim to wait on the porch while she went and called Jasper. Jasper emerged from the house a minute or two later. He was a short, rotund man with a round face topped by a mop of curly red hair, and he looked as if he spent most of his days hunched over a desk, tapping away at a computer keyboard.
“Oh yeah, how can I help you?” he asked Jim, one eyebrow raised with suspicion.
“This is going to sound a little weird,” Jim said, “but how much do you remember about the year 1991?”
“What?” Jasper said, with a look on his face that clearly suggested that he thought Jim was insane.
“If I’ve got the right Jasper Devries,” Jim said, “you were almost kidnapped from a park when you were eight years old, right? That was you, wasn’t it?”
Now an entirely different look came over Jasper’s face, and the unmistakable gleam of fear and old, long-buried trauma shone in his eyes. He simply nodded in response.
“I’m sorry if mentioning the incident is bringing back some bad memories,” Jim said, “and believe me, I wouldn’t be here bothering you if it weren’t really important. You see, another boy—an eight-year-old, just like you were back in 91—has been abducted. It happened only a few days ago. And as a lifelong resident of this town, and being around the same age as me, I’m sure you remember the spate of kidnappings that happened later in 91. And, as you might remember, those kids weren’t as lucky as you; they never escaped, and they were never found. I have reason to believe that the man who took the boy a few days ago is the same man who abducted those kids in 91—and I think he may be the same guy who tried to abduct you that year.”
Jasper nodded slowly and swallowed a dry gulp of nothing. “Come in, please,” he said softly.
Jim followed Jasper into the house. Jasper led him to the living room, where two young boys were playing video games. The sight of the boys laughing and playing stabbed a spear of deep empathy into Jim. This was what little Keith should be doing about now, but instead, he was … Jim didn’t want to entertain too many possibilities about the boy’s whereabouts, for they all seemed too disturbing and frightening. His sixth sense told him the boy was still alive, but his life force was weakening … time was running out.
“Boys, go play outside for a while,” Jasper said. “I need to talk to this man, and we need some peace and quiet.”
“Aw, Dad, we’re almost at the end of the level, and—”
“Put it on pause and go outside, Ted. Now, please.”
Ted, the older boy, sighed and rolled his eyes but paused the video game, and then he and his brother left the room.
“Tell me what you remember about that day,” Jim said. “I’m sorry if it’s painful to think about, but that little boy needs you to remember as much as you can.”
