Stolen Lives : The Lives Trilogy Book 1 (13 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“Kelliher.”

“This is Deputy Leonard Buckey,” he sounded agitated, out of breath.  “George’s cousin.”

Pete sighed, impatient.

“Yes, Leonard, I remember.”

“I did some digging on the helicopter, the one I saw leaving George’s home.”

Pete was suddenly interested.

“They’re dead.  The pilot and two passengers . . . probably the shooter and the spotter.”

“Wait . . . wait!”

Pete moved towards the kitchen, turning his back to the group in the family room.

“Start at the beginning.”

Leonard searched for the helicopter he saw leaving the ranch.  He figured it was probably hired in one of the bigger towns or cities within a hundred mile radius or so of the Tokay homestead.  He found a small charter company owned by Hugh Janovic out of Gallup, New Mexico.  In addition to one small aircraft of the site-seeing variety, he owned two helicopters, one red on white and the other blue on white, neither having a company logo.

He was found shot at close range, two shots to his face.  Two other men were found shot presumably as they stepped off the helicopter with one, Mathew Dooley, still holding a Springfield MIA semi-automatic .308 caliber with a 4 by 14 scope.  Leonard figured the other guy, Daryl Fisher, was the spotter.

They were found by the wife of Janovic.  He had not come home for dinner and had not answered the seven phone calls placed to him by her throughout the day.  The ME figured they had been dead for approximately twelve hours, putting the time at approximately 1:00 PM MST, within an hour or so of the killing of the Tokay family.

“Is George safe?”  Leonard asked at the end of his recital.

Thinking of the implications, he missed Leonard’s question.

“
Kelliher
, is George safe?”  Leonard yelled into the phone.

“Yes, yes . . . he’s fine.  I’ll have him call you in a couple of hours.  We’re in the middle of something here.  I promise you he’s safe.”

“What the hell did he get himself into?”  Leonard said more to himself than to Pete.

“Shit, Leonard, I’m not sure.”

*                                                        *                                                        *

Pete, Summer and Chet huddled in the kitchen with the door closed so he could tell them about Leonard’s phone call.

“The rifle matches the caliber of bullets Dahlke and I found at the Tokay ranch.  Who is tying up loose ends, and why is he . . . they . . . one step ahead of us?  I don’t get it!” Summer ran her hand through her hair and stared up at the ceiling.

Pete pulled out his notes and showed them to both Summer and Chet.

“In all my spare time,” he said with a wry chuckle, “I created this.  I don’t think I talked to anyone out of the circle.  I’ve looked at my cell call log, both incoming and outgoing, and unless my cell was traced, there is no one outside of the team, except for the folks at the Missing Children Center, Jeremy Evans, Skip Dahlke, and Jamie Graff, the detective in there, George’s cousin, and the sheriff up north.  Did either of you create one like I suggested?”

Chet shook his head, as did Summer, who took the notes from him.  She scanned them, then turned her back from them and leaned against the counter.  She spun around, looked up at them, eyes distant, then turned back to the sink and threw up.

“What?”  Pete said.

“Get Doug on the phone.  Now!”

Pete punched Doug’s number into his cell and pushed the button so it was on speaker.

“Pete, who is with you?”  Rawson asked.

“Summer and Chet.”

“How secure is this conversation?”  Musgrave asked.

“Logan?”

Odd that the two of them happened to be together at the same time, especially this late into the evening.

“How secure is this conversation,” Musgrave asked again, this time more forcefully.

“How secure does it need to be?”  Pete asked, looking from Summer to Chet.

There was a long pause before Doug said, “I think we’ve found our mole.”

“Who?” Pete asked.

“It was me, wasn’t it?” Summer asked.

“Bullshit,” Pete laughed, but looked at Summer and noticed she was ashen.

*                                                        *                                                        *

Before the end of the conversation, it was agreed that Doug would run surveillance on the suspect; four teams of two, twenty-four hour coverage.  This would include phone taps, surreptitiously looking into computer files and monitoring cell traffic where and when possible.  Logan would be control, with all parties reporting directly to him. No one outside of the team other than those already in was to be involved from here on.  In fact, any information to anyone outside of the team had to be approved of in advance by Musgrave.  Pete phoned Dahlke and asked him for a preliminary report on the van found in Pembine.

“We have a lot of prints.  Some match Ruiz and Szymanski and the boy . . . Ryan Wynn.  We found blood on the floor of the van, along with clothes that the boy might have worn.  There is trace DNA in the boy’s boxers.  Roz is going to type it against both men and the boy.  If it doesn’t match, then it might be the DNA of the third man . . . the man who killed all three in the woods.”

“Skip, I need you to be careful.”

He gave him Logan’s cell number, as well as Chet’s and Summer’s cell.

“In case you need anything local, contact Detective Jamie Graff with the Waukesha Police Department.  Don’t contact anyone else.  Fax the reports directly to Musgrave in D.C.”

“What’s going on, Pete?  How bad is this?”

Pete paused and then said very quietly, “Skip, if something happens to me, you need to get George back to Arizona.”

He gave him Jeremy’s number and the number of George’s cousin, Leonard.

*                                                        *                                                        *

Informing Greg and Marcia Carrigan had really royally sucked, just like Jamie had thought it would.  How could it otherwise?  It was impossible to tell parents gently that their son had been molested.  No, just like Jamie thought, it fuckin’ sucked. 

There was anger, threats to kill Rodemaker, which were modified later to just beating the shit out of him, feelings silently shared by Pete, Jeremy and Jamie.  Finally the only emotion left was the profound sadness they felt because they believed they had let their son down. 

Jeremy explained that Scott would need their love and support now more than ever.  He told them that Scott wasn’t the only boy that had been molested by Rodemaker, though he couldn’t give them names when they had asked.  The whole process took less than thirty minutes and then Jeremy went with them to the hospital, while Pete and Jamie left for the station to formally interview Rodemaker.

*                                                        *                                                        *

Rodemaker waived his right to an attorney after Jamie and Pete explained that his only chance at any sort of deal would be to cooperate.  A deal, however, would be up to the US Attorney. 

The FBI, particularly the members of Summer’s and Pete’s unit were formally in charge due to the fact that two of the boys in Rodemaker’s video collection, Tim Pruett and Johnny Vega had been missing for more than a year.  They had been identified by a worker bee at the Center, who was told that potentially, there was a lead on them but that he needed to keep this quiet until it was thoroughly investigated. 

Pruett was from West Bend, Wisconsin, while Vega was from El Paso, Texas.  That meant that kids had been transported across state lines.  This was among other charges yet to be filed, inter-state trafficking and kidnapping.  The only bright side to all of this was the fact that the date showing Rodemaker with them in Chicago a month or so ago meant that they both could still be alive.  This absolutely validated Pete’s theory that the human trafficking ring existed.  There was no longer any doubt.

Even though the FBI was officially in charge, it was Summer’s and Pete’s idea to let Jamie take the lead.  Musgrave gave them the green light to let it play out, so Pete sat in on the interview.

Jamie Graff was a six foot, two hundred pound guy with dark hair and sometimes with, sometimes without a mustache.  This was a time he had the mustache.  He was described by his boss, Captain Jack O’Brien, as a thorough investigator, probably the best detective on the force and the best interrogator.  He had a soft voice and was naturally reserved and thoughtful.  He usually took on the role of the nice guy, the friend who wanted to help the suspect out.  Almost always, it worked.

While, Jamie and Pete worked on Rodemaker, Summer and Chet worked on Rodemaker’s cell phone and his computer, the subject of the second warrant.

They discovered a gold mine.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Jeremy found the kids barely awake at Jon and Bert’s house when he rang the doorbell.  They looked sleepy and greeted him with yawns as they got up from the couch in the Lantz family room and trooped out of the house to the Evan’s house next door, still yawning and heads drooping.

In very brief detail, he explained to the boys what had transpired.  He didn’t give any names, since some of the boys attended Butler Middle School just as Randy and Billy did.  The names of the kids and many of the details were confidential and way beyond what was appropriate to share despite what Randy had heard and had been through himself.

George shuffled off to the spare bedroom after going to the bathroom to wash up and brush his teeth with the toothbrush and toothpaste Pete had bought for him.  He changed into clean boxers and gym shorts, which were among the clothes Pete had purchased at a discount chain store.  Even though George typically wore either cowboy boots or moccasins, Pete reasoned that every kid should own a new pair of Addidas, so he asked George his shoe size and bought him a pair.  No sooner than his head hit the pillow did he fall asleep. 

Jeremy stuck his head in the room hoping to have a quiet word with him but noticed the heavy rhythmic breathing of a very sound, and tired, sleeper.  So instead, he tiptoed over to the bed, stroked his cheek, then left, closing the door to a slit.  He felt guilty because he had not said much to George and certainly had done nothing to comfort the boy.  He’d make amends in the morning.

He knocked on Randy’s and Billy’s room and walked in.  It was a small room, cozy, just a bit larger than the spare room.  There were three windows.  Two were in the corners over each boy’s bed and a third was positioned in the middle of the room sort of like a line of demarcation defining which side of the room was whose.

However, there really didn’t need to be an artificial separation between the two halves because the boys shared everything.  Yet, it was easy to figure out which side of the room belonged to which boy.  Billy had posters of sports figures like Milwaukee Brewer Ryan Braun and Green Bay Packer Aaron Rogers.  There was a book shelf that was filled with various baseball and basketball trophies, along with several biographies and autobiographies of sports figures.  A basketball sat on the light blue carpeted floor next to a baseball stuffed in a baseball glove against his dresser. 

Randy had posters of Carrie Underwood, Taylor Swift and Tim McGraw.  On his book shelf were paperbacks by Stephen King, a hardcover volume of
The Complete Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes
and an older hardcover collection of Nathaniel Hawthorne short stories and full-length stories.  There were CDs and an IPod with a docking station hooked up to speakers.  A Yamaha acoustic guitar sat in a stand in the corner next to his dresser.

Jeremy was surprised that the boys were still awake, though each was in their own bed on their respective sides of the room.  Each had their head propped up on an elbow.

They looked at one another and then Billy said, “We think George should live with us.”

Jeremy sat down on Randy’s bed, which was nearest the door, not saying anything.

“He doesn’t have any family,” Billy continued.  “We have room, and we like him.”

Jeremy looked over at Randy and then back at Billy who said, “I think we should at least ask him.”

“He has a cousin, but I’m not sure who else he has left,” Jeremy said.  “Have you talked with him about it?”

The boys looked at each other and then Randy said, “We thought we should talk to you first.”

“We really don’t know anything about George,” Jeremy said gently.  “We only met him a couple of hours ago.”

“Can you at least think about it?”  Billy said.

“You both feel this way?” Jeremy asked, knowing that both of them did, or Billy wouldn’t have brought it up.

“Yup,” Billy answered for both of them.

“I’ll think about it.  Promise,” Jeremy said.  “Now, both of you need to get some sleep.  He got up and kissed Billy’s forehead and said, “Goodnight.”  He moved over to Randy, ran his hand through his hair and said, “You okay?”

Randy nodded.

“What happened tonight at the Forstadt house?” Jeremy asked.

“It was the pictures,” Randy answered. “He took pictures and sent them in e-mail and over the internet.  It made me angry.”

“And reminded you of what Mitch and Ernie did to you,” Jeremy said.

“Yeah.  The thing is, I don’t know, and Garrett won’t know . . . ever know, who has them or who has seen them . . .” Randy’s voice trailed.

Jeremy kissed the top of his head, then took his face into his hands and said, “Talk in the morning?”

Randy nodded again.

“Okay,” Jeremy said, caressing his cheek.  He bent down to kiss his forehead again, but Randy held him in a hug, whispering, “I love you.”

“Love you too, Randy,” his voice catching.  “You too, Billy.  I love you guys a lot.”

“Love you too,” Billy said.

Jeremy took a long look at the boys, who had rolled onto their sides facing each other, then turned off the light and shut the door to a crack.  Then he went to the family room and phoned Jamie to let him know what Randy had told him about the pictures.

*                                                        *                                                        *

“Here’s what we have Mr. Rodemaker,” Jamie said rifling through pages of notes and glossy 8 x 10s.  “We have you on multiple rape charges, sodomy, and molestation, indecent liberties with a minor, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and possession of pornography, distributing pornography, and possibly, accessory to kidnapping along with accessory to murder.”

“I never kidnapped or murdered anyone!” he shouted.  “I think I want a lawyer.”

“That’s certainly your right,” Jamie said with a nod.  “The FBI wants to fry your nuts over a stoked fire, but we’ve been talking.  I’ve been given some latitude in the charges that might be filed.  It all depends upon how much you cooperate . . . or not, as the case may be.”

Pete leaned over Rodemaker getting into his face.

“I’m not into deals, but I have my orders.  In the next room, I have a computer expert who is giving your computer, your cell phone and anything else electronic a proctoscopic, so here’s how it works,” he paused for effect.  “The faster you talk and the more you cooperate, we deal with you.  The minute you lie, deny or mislead us, this interview is over, and we
will
build a fire and fry your nuts.  You understand?”

Rodemaker nodded so vigorously, his head was in danger of unhinging and falling off his neck.

“I already told you I’d cooperate.”

Jamie shoved a piece of paper and pen across the desk, explaining that the paper Rodemaker was about to sign waived his right to an attorney, that he voluntarily cooperated with the investigation and that he acknowledged that the interview would be both videotaped and recorded.  Rodemaker barely glanced at the forms before he signed and initialed them.  He couldn’t do it fast enough.

*                                                        *                                                        *

This was the kind of stuff Chet lived for.  When he sat down at a computer, nothing and no one else existed.  He could begin a project, and hours, even days, could pass before he realized it.  Diet Coke and Snickers kept him going long into the night or early morning.  Of course, he didn’t have all night to dive into and make sense of Rodemaker’s computer and cell phone because the lives of two missing kids might possibly depend upon what he found.

Rodemaker had given Chet a user name and password he said he used on the computer, and Chet had written it down on a pad of paper but set it off to the side.

He set up Rodemaker’s computer and turned it on and then he opened up his own laptop and turned it on.  He opened up a black case, which contained a number of disks.  He selected one and inserted it into Rodemaker’s disk drive.

“What are you doing?” Summer asked.

“I’m using a system CD to boot up Slimeball’s computer to access the file system on the hard drive,” Chet answered not even looking at her.

“Why don’t you just use the user name and password he gave you?”

Chet turned to her with a puzzled expression and said, “Why do you think he’d be honest with us?  The goodness of his heart?  The sudden desire to repent and come clean?”

“We have him six different ways from Sunday on about a dozen different charges. He’s trying to lessen the impact,” Summer answered.

“Yeah, right.  Or . . . he could be trying to erase contents on his hard drive.  By using a specific user name or password, he could have set up his computer to erase everything automatically.”

“Huh,” Summer said, sitting back to watch Chet work.

Chet booted up Rodemaker’s computer using his “special” system CD and made an exact image of the hard drive to an external USB drive, so it could be used as forensic evidence.  Then, he opened the original hard drive in the computer and went right to the Documents and Settings folder to look at the various user names on personal folders within. 

He looked up the user name Rodemaker gave him and discovered that it was indeed rigged to automatically run a disk erase utility to clean off the hard drive.

“Told you . . . he rigged it!  He must have all sorts of crap on here he didn’t want us to see.”

“So he’s not cooperating.” Summer didn’t pose that as a question.

“In a word, no way.”

“That’s two words,” Summer said.

“But you get my point,” Chet said.  “He’s trying to cover his tracks.”

Chet looked at the other user folders and found one called, ‘
pizza_guy
’.  He then looked into the settings folder for the Firefox history and cache but didn’t find any user folders.

“Huh,” he said with a nod.

“What?” Summer asked.

“He’s trying to cover his tracks.”

“You said that already.”

He didn’t answer, but went to the BookMarks.html and found various links anyone might have: CNN, CBS Sports, ESPN.  Then he found a link to a site called, ‘
Desert Ranch Ponies
’ and became curious because it didn’t fit an otherwise ordinary pattern.

“We went through his financials, and there was nothing in there about a ranch, farm or livestock, right?”

Summer opened a folder, ran a finger down pages notes and pages of bank records and then answered, “No, nothing.  Why?”

“Not sure . . . I’ll tell you in a minute.”

Chet switched to his work computer and went to the Desert Ranch Ponies web site.  Nothing special, except that the page was a beautiful picture of three ponies set against a red-orange sunset, with red hills and Joshua Trees in the background.  He then switched back to Rodemaker’s computer and combed through the pizza_guy user settings looking for any additional traps, but found none.  Then, he rebooted the computer using his Ophcrack Live CD.

“What are you doing now?” Summer asked with a yawn.

“I’m running a password cracking utility to find out what Rodemaker’s password is for his user name.”  Before she had a chance to ask, Chet said, “His preferred user name is ‘
pizza_guy
’.”

It was just a matter of minutes before he found Rodemaker’s password, which was ‘
love2loveboys
’.

“Sick sonofabitch!” Chet said through clenched teeth.

Next, he logged in as
pizza_guy
with the
love2loveboys
password and looked at Rodemaker’s email, finding acknowledgements to email sent to a list serve.  The list would have to be checked out in case these were addresses of perverts collecting and sending Kiddie porn as Chet suspected they would be.  He printed out the list and asked Summer to fax it to Musgrave.

“How do you know they’re pervs?” Summer asked.

“Hunch,” Chet grunted.

He went to sent mail and opened up the email sent to the list serve and clicked on the first attachment.  Chet and Summer found themselves staring at a frontal nude picture of an unsmiling Scott Carrigan, the boy they had found with Rodemaker earlier that evening.  He clicked on the second and then a third attachment and found similar pictures, all pornographic.

“Sharing his own personal memories with a few of his closest pervert friends.  Can I shoot the sonofabitch now?” Chet asked Summer through clenched teeth.

He clicked off the picture, turned to Summer and said, “I know I’ve not been doing this as long as you and Pete, but I don’t understand these sons of bitches.  How can they do this to kids?”

Summer shook her head.  She had given up trying to answer that one a long, long time ago.

In a little over twenty minutes, Chet had unearthed hundreds of pictures of nude boys in various poses in a folder simply titled ‘
Boys
’.  Some of the pictures showed boys handcuffed to what looked like the inside of a van.  Others were pornographic.