Shattered Lives (14 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Waukesha, Wisconsin

The man sat on the hotel bed staring at the TV, glued to the image of the two boys next to the police captain and in front of their parents.  This was his first glimpse of the boy since he had received the jpg sent by email when Stephen was in the back of the van the night he was taken.  Stephen was nervous, and the man liked that.

Most of the time, the shot was only of the boys’ heads and shoulders, sometimes together, sometimes separately.  Less time was spent on the parents, except when Jennifer Erickson spoke.

              The man focused on the boys.  The questions began and the boys took turns, first the dark-haired boy, Michael, and then Stephen.

              The man liked the sound of boys’ voices.  It was a musical sound, exciting for him to hear.  He liked looking at Stephen’s face, his full lips and his blue eyes with long lashes.  He found himself getting aroused.

              He stopped as the female reporter asked Stephen a question, something about what Stephen might want to say to the man who had him kidnapped.  He had missed the exact question, because he was already into his fantasy about using Stephen.

              “
The only thing I want to say is that I’ll do whatever I need to do to make sure he’s caught.  And when he is, I’ll do everything I can to make sure he’s in jail for the rest of his life.”

              The man was stunned.  He felt himself getting sick to his stomach again. 

He stood up, but then sat back down, his hand covering his mouth.  Absentmindedly, he ran his other hand through his hair.  He got up off the bed slowly, one hand still in his hair, the other still covering his mouth.

Stephen wasn’t supposed to react this way.  In his mind, Stephen
wanted
him,
needed
him, and
enjoyed
him.  Stephen wasn’t supposed to be
angry. 

The man had to think this through.

So far, no one knew about him, though it was clear that they were looking for him.  If the police knew it was him, they’d be all over it, and he’d be in custody.  But a call to his neighbor verified that no one had been to his house.  A call from the receptionist confirmed that no one had shown up at the office.

So far, he was in the clear.

That was the first and biggest hurdle.  He knew he could work his charm on Stephen and then, if he played it right, Stephen and he would have a
real
relationship.

A relationship. 

That was what the man had wanted all along.  He had other boys, but Stephen was the boy he had really wanted.

Stephen.

He’d have to plan.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Chicago, Illinois

             
Pete read and reread the text messages Cochrane had sent.  He read over the call log, jotting down the numbers.  He had already called Chet to give him the phone’s pertinent numbers and IP address, and he knew Chet was all over it. 

Pete checked the contact list in the phone, but none had matched the numbers to the text messages or the recent phone calls.  He knew this group was gunning for George, Jeremy and Randy.  He was less concerned about himself, but was also worried about Chet, Skip and Summer.  He also wondered if his team had been compromised.  Cochrane had stored the numbers of so many people involved in the hunt, including several of the kids.  Jeremy’s number was listed too.  Luckily Graff’s and O’Brien’s numbers were not.

There was something else that nibbled at the back of his mind that he couldn’t put his finger on.  He knew it was something important though.

He left the conference room in search of Dr. Flasch and found him at the nurses’ station on the second floor.  He asked if he had given the number of his office phone to Cochrane.

Flasch looked somewhere in the distance as his quick mind searched for any recollection of Cochrane using his office for a phone call, if he had given his number to Cochrane, or if anyone else might have given the number to him.

“Not that I know of, but if you need a secure line, follow me.”

Flasch took off at a quick walk down the hallway without waiting for Pete to answer. 

Pete caught up to him and said, “Wherever you’re taking me, we have to be sure Cochrane wouldn’t have known about it.”

Flasch didn’t say anything but continued down a flight of stairs to the main floor and walked past the Information Desk, which was now manned with two security personnel and one younger woman, who had relieved the elderly lady just after Cochrane shot the security guard during the kidnap attempt.  Behind him, Pete had noticed the thick plywood sheets covering the shattered glass in the entryway, but otherwise, didn’t see any other evidence of a shootout.  The blood from the security guard had been mopped up, glass from the windows had been swept up and anyone who had showed up in the last hour or so wouldn’t have known that anything out of the ordinary had taken place.  The news media was told very little, and they reported even less.

Flasch knocked on a door, tried the doorknob and found it locked.  He looked past Pete to the lobby, caught a security guard’s eye and motioned for him to come to him.  Puzzled, the security guard obeyed.

“Yes?” said the young, fit guard.

Pete figured him to be in his late thirties, maybe early forties and had an air of ex-military about him.  The
36
th
Air Cavalry
tat on his right forearm confirmed Pete’s suspicion.  He had short cropped black hair, dark eyes and shiny white teeth, but Pete wondered if the man ever smiled.

Flasch leaned a bit forward to read the guard’s badge and said, “Mr. Stevens, this is FBI Agent Pete Kelliher.  He needs to use a secure line to make a call.  I know Dr. McDonough has been on vacation for the past week, so can you let him in Mac’s office to make his call?”

“May I see some identification?” The security man said to Pete.

Pete dug out his creds and held them out for the guard to read.  Instead, the guard took the wallet-sized leather jacket from him and read it, glancing at Pete twice to confirm Pete was the guy in the photo.  Satisfied, he handed it back to Pete and knocked twice on the door, listened to nothing but silence coming from the other side and then used his master key to open the door.  He pushed the door open, stepped in to make sure the office was empty and then stepped aside to let Pete enter.

“Dial 9 to get an outside line.  I’ll wait down the hall for you,” Flasch said, pushing the lock button and shutting the door behind him.

Instead of calling Dandridge directly, he went through the FBI switchboard and had the receptionist connect him to Rita, Dandridge’s secretary.

“Rita, don’t say my name, but do you recognize my voice?”

There was a pause, and he knew that Rita had begun recording the conversation.

“Yes.”

“Good.  You have caller ID on your phone, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Write down the number and find Whitey.  Tell him to call me at this number, but he needs to do it from a secure line.  He can’t use anyone’s number that might have been in contact with me in the last four days.  Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be waiting at this number for his phone call.  And Rita?”

“Yes?”

“It’s urgent.”

“Understood.”

“This is Whitey,” was all that was said when Pete picked up the receiver.

Whitey had been Pete’s name for Dandridge when they went through training together at Quantico.  No one other than Pete had ever dared to call him that.  The two men had developed a lasting friendship that didn’t stop at the supervisor – subordinate boundary because they had recognized they were different sides of the same coin.

“I think we’re good, as long as your end is secure.”

“It is.  What’s up?”

“I have reason to believe Cochrane compromised phone numbers.”

“I see,” Dandridge said slowly.  He paused and asked, “Why do you suspect that?”

“I’m looking at his contact list and there are a lot of numbers in it.  Same for the call log.  I only have a hunch . . . no proof, but I think he might have passed on numbers to the bad guys.  If so, I wonder if they’re monitoring phone calls and text messages.  I don’t know their technological capabilities, but I do know they’re resourceful.”

Dandridge knew Pete well enough to trust his hunches.

“How do you want to play this?”

“Could go a couple of ways.”

“Which are?”

“We could warn everyone, but if we do, we have no connection to the bad guys.”

“But if we don’t warn everyone, it potentially puts them in danger.”  He paused and then asked, “What do you think we should do?”

Dandridge asked the question cautiously as if he didn’t want to hear the answer, but also as if he knew what Pete’s answer was going to be.

“We use the lines as we normally do, but we use them to our advantage.”

“Feeding the bad guys misinformation.”

“The problem is it’s dangerous.” 

Pete went on to explain his plan, knowing Dandridge might confer with Summer, but he doubted it.  It would be Dandridge’s decision and his alone.  Like the captain of the Titanic, Dandridge was the kind of man to either sail the ship into port or if he hit the iceberg, go down with the ship.  Either way, the decision was his.

Dandridge let his breath out slowly.

“One condition, Pete.”

“Of course.”

“If at any point it puts kids or other innocents in jeopardy, we call it off and come clean to everyone involved.”

Pete nodded and said, “Absolutely.  I won’t have their deaths on my conscience.”

“Nor on mine,” Dandridge said.  There was a final pause and he said, “Go with it.  I’ll take care of things on my end and get word to MB.”

Pete punched the phone dead, rubbed his eyes, and swiveled around and looked out the window, worrying that if things went sideways, he had just sentenced four innocent lives to death.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Chicago, Illinois

Pete’s idea was to set up a noose so the bad guys would hang themselves.  He called Chet from a payphone at the airport and told him to get to a secure line.  Chet called back using a phone in a library lobby, Pete filled him in on his suspicions, told him to warn Skip but no one else.  He also told Chet to contact Morgan Billias. 

Billias was a mild-mannered, easy-going middle-aged guy with a wife, two teenage daughters and a preteen son that Chet never knew about.  He had an easy laugh, a ready wise crack, and could find humor in anything.  He didn’t work for the CIA or the NSA or any of the other alphabet groupings that belonged to the government.  Chet had never asked Morgan what he did or where he lived or whether or not he was married and had two or six children.  And Morgan had never told him.

He and Chet had met at a computer expo in San Francisco, got to talking about computers, had a couple of beers together and hit it off.  They kept in contact off and on with Chet reaching out to him whenever a “puzzle” needed to be solved.  Nothing grandiose, just puzzles.  He had played a huge part in freeing the boys from captivity, and an even bigger part in saving George’s, Jeremy’s and the twins’ lives.

This time, however, it was Pete’s idea to bring Billias into the circle to monitor Cochrane’s cell phones and to monitor the phones of those who had tried to contact him.

Billias readily agreed.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Indianapolis, Indiana

             
Only the two Indianapolis cops who had responded to the 9-1-1 call and MB had entered the home, so that had made Skip’s job easier.  He had worked the crime scene in Luke Pressman’s home silently, quickly and thoroughly like the professional he was.  Pressman’s body still sat in the recliner in his living room.  Blood had pooled under both legs from the shots to his kneecaps, and there was blood spatter on the curtains behind the chair, along with a chunk of brain matter and bits of skull.  The fact that Pressman’s eyes and mouth were open made the whole tableau gruesome.

              Skip had found partials in the back bedroom and possible DNA in and around the toilet.  Of course, he’d have to compare these with Pressman’s DNA to determine if they were his or Dominico’s or anyone else’s.  He had found indeterminate fiber on the couch facing Pressman, and it was sent to the FBI lab to analyze it further to determine what it was and what the origins were.

              He felt like he hadn’t done enough, and what he did do, didn’t amount to anything usable beyond what they already knew: Dominico had murdered Pressman, and this murder was the first of several with more to come if the 9-1-1 tape was accurate.

              He had found even less at Dominico’s home.  There was nothing, other than the empty hole in the floor of the spare bedroom.  One could only speculate as to what was in it.  Other than that hole, there was nothing that would help close the case any quicker.

              “Is he always so serious?” Wilkey asked Chet without taking his eyes off Skip.

              “Pretty much.”

              “He doesn’t talk much.”

              “Nope.”

              She watched him work a bit longer and said, “He seems really young.  Must be smart.”

              “His IQ is 156, which is fifteen points higher than mine and twenty-one points higher than yours,” Chet answered not looking up from his laptop.

              Wilkey glanced back at Chet and said, “How do you know his IQ and how the hell do you know mine?”

              Chet sighed, punched a few more keys and then said, “I was burned twice . . . once with Rawson and once with Cochrane.”  He stared and said, “I’m not going to make that mistake again.”

              MB glared at him, folded her arms across her chest and said, “Don’t pry into any of my business again.”

              Chet went back to his laptop and didn’t commit one way or the other.  When it came to his safety or the safety of the team, he’d pry into anyone he saw fit.