Mind Games (10 page)

“That’s not the worst of it. There’s more than missing shoelaces. One time, I was cleaning up my shop just down the road when a stray dog came trotting down the hill. He had something in his mouth, and I couldn’t quite see what it was. The dog kept coming closer and closer, and since I wasn’t wearing my glasses, I couldn’t make out exactly what the pooch had between his jowls. The old mutt came right up to me and kept wagging his tail like he wanted to play fetch. So, I grabbed the stick, but this was no stick. It was a human arm!”

“You’re kidding.”

Dan itched his nose. “Would I lie about something like that? I can’t even dream up this stuff, man. It just happens. You know?”

“So, what did you do?”

“Well, I gave the arm a proper burial and hosed down the mutt before feeding him some beef jerky. I didn’t have any doggy snacks with me at the time.”

“You buried the arm?” Cameron was regretting pulling over more and more.

“Well, what would have you done? It’s still part of somebody, isn’t it? Man, if you ask me the arm might have belonged to the Rabbit Hermit. But I’m just speculating, of course. I know the Hermit was alive a few years ago when Randy told me all this stuff, but now I’m not so sure. Geez, talking about beef jerky is making me hungry.”

“So did your friend Randy tell you where the hermit lives?”

“Yes. Well, sort of. Apparently, the hermit lives in a cabin deep in the woods, but no one has ever been able to figure out its exact whereabouts. Even those fancy satellites can’t pick him up. There are a lot of clowns bouncing around out here with their mini cars and their mini brains, claiming to have pictures of the hermit. Of course, that can’t be true because he wouldn’t show up on film. He’s not a vampire or anything like that, just real old. Once people get past a hundred years, they stop showing up in photographs. It has something to do with how the sunlight reflects off their old skin or something. A trick of the light. Yep, he’s a true man of mystery, that one. A real stick in the mud. A real shit-monger. Randy told me the hermit only laughed after a rabbit kill – son of a gun. I’d bet the hermit’s a twisted old coot after living in the woods all these years – with one arm, no doubt. I’d bet his compass ain’t exactly pointing due north anymore. Probably lost his mind somewhere out in the pines.”

Cameron noticed a bumper sticker attached to Dan’s car
:
Shit Happen
s
. “Looks like you’re a real truth seeker, huh?” Cameron chuckled.

Dan looked up. “Oh, that? Well, you know. Look at us – out in the middle of nowhere changing a flat. I’d say it’s pretty true today.”

Cameron kicked at some gravel. “Yeah, my wife was…taken. Someone kidnapped her last night.”

“Geez, I’m sorry. That’s god-awful. Taken where?”

“I wish I knew,” Cameron said.

“Shoot. Look, I know it’s stupid when people say they understand, but I do understand. My son was out driving around with his buddy Blake one evening, and they just never came back. Blake was a bit of a rebel-rouser, but he wasn’t smoking weed or anything. Like I said, Max was only sixteen. That’s been two years ago. The police searched and searched, but they never found the vehicle or the boys. I finally decided it was the old hermit – or I was just an awful father or something. But that don’t make sense because I did everything with Max. We’d go hunting and fishing, and we’d take ski trips in the winter. Heck, he even helped his old man sell some fireworks from time to time.”

Cameron’s stomach dropped as he began to think that the police might never find Jennifer.

Dan kicked the new tire and Cameron helped him lower the car back to ground level.

“Life robs you sometimes. That doesn’t mean you have to stop living. Well, I’m very thankful for your help, and I’ll keep you in my thoughts as they find your wife. They will find her.” Dan patted Cameron on the back as he loaded the car jack and the wrench back into the trunk. “I haven’t given up on my son, so have some hope. Who knows, maybe Max is just off on an extended road trip with Blake. I just wish he’d call me up and give me a chance to help him with some money or something. You take care now. Thanks for the help, Good Samaritan.”

Cameron walked back to his ca
r
, surprised by the stuffy heat that hung in the car’s interior like a heavy mist. In the time he’d spent helping Dan change the flat, the sun’s penetrating heat had been magnified through the windshield, causing a greenhouse effect. The heat pressed against Cameron’s face as if it were denser than air; a pseudo-liquid that made breathing difficult.

As he reached for the seatbelt, he quickly pulled his hand away when the metal seared his fingertips. Grabbing the cloth strap of the seatbelt, he secured it with a click and pulled back onto the highway. He turned on the air conditioning, but all that came out was a blast of heat. As he passed a semi truck for soft drinks, Cameron rolled down his window a few inches, letting the relief of the zooming breeze wash over his face.

He knew it wasn’t worth it to become lost in despair. He couldn’t ignore his feelings, but he also had to stay reasonable. He still had a team of people who would help him search for her. Cameron just wanted to find her and bring her back safely.

This was a crime scene he never wanted to photograph.

THE NAMES

Amy spent the morning at Cameron’s house
,
searching for any signs of evidence pointing to the abductors. She found that the security cameras in the house had been turned off when the intruders took Jennifer. But other than that, the only substantial physical evidence was Jennifer’s DNA.

Now, back at the Fourth precinct, Amy organized a small search team. She told them to be ready to leave within the next few hours. The urgency to find Jennifer Frost grew with every hour that passed since the first twenty-four hours were extremely crucial. Unfortunately, the abductors hadn’t given Amy much to go on.

So far, they had no license plate or any other vehicle information, and since Jennifer’s cell phone was left behind, there was really no possible way to track her whereabouts.

Cameron sat at his desk and played with his stapler as his mind wandered back to the dark questions he’d been fighting ever since he saw the marshmallows on his kitchen floor. The looming possibilities about what was happening to Jennifer triggered a primal fear in the pit of Cameron’s stomach.

He didn’t feel like moving.

He wanted to curl up in a ball under his desk.

Cameron dug his fingernails into his palms, reminding himself that this wasn’t about his own safety. Besides, he knew Jennifer would never crawl under a desk in fear. No, Cameron knew she’d stay strong. He tried to put himself in her shoes. If a group of abductors had taken him instead, Jen would do everything she could to find him and bring him back home safely.

The least he could do was get off his sorry ass and try something; but the sleepless night added weight to his eyelids, threatening to pull them down in total exhaustion.

Amy faced the evidence board like it was her deadly opponent. She eyed the corner of the board, and walked up to it, removing a stack of pictures clipped together by a magnet holder. Taking the photos in her hands, Amy sorted them onto a metal table like she was dealing a deck of cards. These were the photos of the other forty missing people from San Francisco within the last two years:

Max Parsons, 18

Dallas Hewes, 38

Stan Trent, 40

Claude Cannata, 34  

Robert Derrick, 27

Meghan Cohan, 33

Glenn Short, 49

Elisha Langham, 52

Valerie Burkhard, 22

Alfred Hamiter, 30

Manual Walla, 47

Raymond Koening, 32

Calandra Johnson, 30

Arlen Canning, 45

Malik Normand, 47

Stephenie Polansky, 36

Nathanial Minger, 29

Jonas Rodriques, 55

Conrad Mcdaniels, 44

Young Lanter, 40

Annelle Hillyard, 43

Steve Fentress, 36

Cyrus Tobin, 27

Jeff Hartsfield, 45

Morton Oldenburg, 32

Molly Everette, 44

Mauro Windstone, 40

Esther Pike, 43

Nancy Clinton, 32

Lanelle Ewan, 37

Keiko Croswell, 42

Britni Dakin, 44

Monnie Guth, 41

Rosie Bucknell, 52

Malia Cleavenger, 25

Ingrid Roth, 52

Trisha Kottke, 35

Arcelia Bruckner, 45

John King, 41

Melanie Garcia, 43

Jennifer Frost, 36

Since the first reported missing person, a teenage boy from the country, the number of reports had been constant over the two years, finally stopping a few months ago when Melanie Garcia was taken. And over this entire time, many precincts within the city became involved in the searches, going as far as using helicopters to search rooftops of old warehouses and robotic probes to search the underground network of sewage tunnels. The F.B.I. also became involved in many of the desperate searches, but as the list grew and grew, none of the forty people were ever found.

Amy’s involvement in the searches caused her to call her mother more often. During those phone calls, Amy reminded her widowed mother to lock her doors and never walk anywhere alone. As the reports piled in, Amy even went so far as to tell her mother to move in with a friend so they would never be in public alone. It’s not as though her mother’s friend had any useful self-dense training, but the pairing brought Amy peace of mind.

She spread the pictures on the table, studying the forlorn faces of the multitude of missing citizens. From countless hours of studying the profiles, Amy concluded the victims really had been chosen at complete random. There were seemingly no major connections between their vocations, nationalities, hobbies, living conditions, or bank accounts. Truly, the victims appeared to be diverse in all of these attributes, sharing only one condition in common: their vehicles had been taken with them. The many reports had listed this detail as just another condition of the abduction, but Amy saw the importance of its listing.

Stolen vehicles. Stolen people.

The only real commonality between the many missing person cases was where they had vanished. The reports varied in speculation from eyewitness reports, but it had been confirmed that most of the vehicles vanished with their passengers south of the city. However, exact locations of the takings had not been determined.

Amy placed Jennifer Frost’s picture off to the side of the other photos, realizing Jen’s smile in the photo did nothing to separate her from the other people.

Amy’s investigation at Cameron’s house just hours before had revealed Jennifer’s vehicle still parked in the garage. Amy’s eyes poured over the other photos, recognizing that Jennifer Frost was the only missing person case not paired with grand theft auto.

Cameron mentioned Jennifer’s recent security proposal at the Empire Bank, communicating the detail with a gravity that surpassed regular paranoia or fear. Amy noted the detail with great importance, counting it more significant than the random professions of the other captives.

Turning Jen’s picture on the table as she thought, Amy saw Jen’s position at the bank as a powerful lead. Jen’s abductors took her to gain access into the Empire Bank.

It wasn’t her body or her identity they were after
.
Amy thought
.
No, Jen’s abductors were after her precious mind.

In a way, Amy could see how whoever took Jen might think of her as a human ATM, a secret weapon that would allow them access to the bank’s mainframe.

Interlocking her fingers, Amy turned around and looked back to the various pictures still attached to the evidence board from the night at Fred Stefani’s mansion.

Was it simply a coincidence that the list of missing persons had come to an abrupt halt around the same time as the house bombings?

Amy paced along the evidence board, tensing the muscles in her legs and abdomen, squeezing the blood towards her brain. She flicked her eyes from photo to photo, studying the images from Stefani’s basement wall. Considering the illegal weapons dealings that moved through Stefani’s supervision, there had to be someone in his criminal network that had some kind of connection with the missing person cases.

Was Jen’s abduction at all connected with Stefani’s weapon business? No. There didn’t seem to be any connection.

With nothing more to go on than a hunch, Amy leaned closer to the evidence board, letting her eyes move over the images the way a metal detector scans for buried coins. The mess of newspaper clippings and photographs on Stefani’s basement wall seemed cryptic at best, chronicling world events that seemed unrelated to local crimes. Stefani had only seemed to use these clippings as a twisted guidebook for managing his arsenal of weapons and dealers, keeping the aftermaths of global attack as a source of inspiration.

As Amy scoured over the photos, placing her mindset back in Stefani’s basement that humid night only a few weeks ago, she remembered that Fred Stefani made his money from dealing in human misery. Supporting and facilitating the sales of illegal weapons on American soil, he was actively providing his clients with the tools to hurt others.

A bitter rage began to build in Amy’s body, starting in her feet then crawling up the muscles in her legs, up through her hips, and into her spine, finally manifesting as a piercing headache behind her eyes. Still, Amy remained in control. She wasn’t going to let her anger towards Stefani – a dead man after all – get the best of her.

Discovering Stefani’s involvement with the local criminal network might lead towards peace in the city. If she deciphered the facts correctly, Amy thought the evidence from Stefani’s house could even lead to the culprit of the wide array of missing person cases.

Among these thoughts, Amy’s eyes caught view of something rather spectacular: a picture of a green highway sign posted in the lower-left corner of Stefani’s photo shrine.

Amy had seen the sign before, every time she went to visit her mother. It was the sign that started the curvy highway 17 down through the forestry further south of San Francisco. It was the highway that, on any satellite picture led deep into the greens of the forest, only emerging in a winding path about eighty miles south.

Wait.

Highway 17…

Could it be the location of another hideout? Possibly a second clubhouse for Stefani’s weapons trade?

Amy massaged her temples.

Maybe someone along Highway 17 was a target for a future attack.

There was so much information about Fred Stefani on the evidence board that Amy felt she was trying to run in water. She popped three pieces of gum in her mouth because she liked the flavor to last a while. And as her jaw worked the gum, her mind worked the evidence.

Another two hours passe
d
, and Cameron fell asleep at his desk. It was just after 2PM, and he’d been fighting sleep all day, but finally caved.

Amy was still deep in thought at the evidence board.

Think. Think. The Shrine. The four secret rooms. The maze. The computer. Ye
s
,
the computer.

She concluded the mysterious man at the computer must have been choosing another target for the San Fran bomber to strike. Then, she moved her eyes to the photo Cameron had taken of the computer screen in the glass room at the end of Stefani’s maze.

Looking closer, Amy noticed icons of faces along the side of the computer screen – like users logged into a shopping cart. It was difficult to make out the details due to a sharp glare across the computer screen in the photo.

She now stood only inches away from the evidence board. That’s when she saw it. One of the faces had been photographed in black and white. The picture icon showed the silhouette of a larg
e
,
fat man wearing a cowboy hat. No face. Just a silhouette.

Amy rushed over and woke up Cameron, then gathered the rest of the team and headed for the door. “Come on, guys.”

“You got a plan, ponytail?” Vince said.

“No, but I think I know where to start. We’re driving south of town to highway 17.”

“I don’t understand,” Cameron said, his voice still scratchy from his mid-day nap at his desk. “You think Jen was taken south?”

“I’m not sure, Cameron. All I know is whoever took her is after the bank’s money, and I suspect it’s one of Stefani’s weapons clients. It just a hunch, but it’s better than waiting around. Stefani posted that local highway for a reason. Let’s go.”

The team left town with five police SUVs
.
They planned to split up later if they found any leads.

Cameron drove alone in the last SUV, bringing up the rear of the pack, praying all the while for Jen’s safety.

Gaining momentum out of the city, the team drove south on Interstate 280 past Daly City, past the exit for San Bruno, and south past Woodside and Cupertino. They exited southeast onto highway 85, following it for about 4 miles and then turned southwest onto highway 17.

The team was about thirty miles from San Francisco, and in the duration of their travels, a distant storm drew closer to the search party.

Within minutes, a light sprinkle beaded and collected on Cameron’s windshield. He turned the wipers on and watched as the road became reflective from the dancing rain. A moment later, the rain fell heavier, muddling his view of the road. He reduced his speed and increased the wiper frequency.

Now, the wipers could hardly keep up with the frantic downpour, and Cameron started to lose sight of the rest of the team ahead. Thunder rolled across the road and lighting flashed upon the darkened sky as if it were trying to get a proper exposure. He drove three more miles in the increasing intensity of the storm. Small pebbles of hail speckled Cameron’s SUV, and the cacophony of the storm became deafening. He leaned forward against the steering wheel and clenched it with his now white-knuckled fists.