The Night Stalker_ A Novel Of Suspense Part 4

He gave me a parting look, then shook his head. I listened to his feet pound the stairs on the way down.

CHAPTER SIX.

I sat at my desk and stared into s.p.a.ce. Music from downstairs was making the whole building shake. I tuned it out and tried to think. sat at my desk and stared into s.p.a.ce. Music from downstairs was making the whole building shake. I tuned it out and tried to think.

Before I'd left the police department, I'd written a turnover report. No one had asked me to, and it wasn't part of my job description, but I'd written one up anyway. It had been a hundred and fifteen pages long.

This turnover report contained every open missing persons case in Broward County, some dating back to my first day on the job. It included the case of a fourteen-year-old girl who'd gone into a department store and disappeared, and another about an elderly man suffering from dementia walking out of a nursing home, and never being seen again. If Cheeks had bothered to read any of what I'd written, he would have known that I had continued chasing leads on those cases long after they'd gone cold. Call it an obsession, but I'd refused to file them away.

I never never quit a case. quit a case.

My unwillingness to give up had defined my career as a detective, and later on, it had cost me my job and ruined my marriage. It was both my good side and my bad side, and I was past apologizing for it. Cheeks should have known better than to ask me to drop Sampson Grimes's case.

I booted up my computer. I had read about the Sampson Grimes case in the newspaper, but the news reports on the Internet tended to have more information than the paper did, and I now pored through them.

There were six different stories posted about Sampson's kidnapping. Each had been filed within twenty-four hours of the boy having gone missing. Reading them, I saw an unusual similarity. From the start of the case, the police had considered Jed Grimes their primary suspect, and had focused their investigation on him. Cheeks was quoted in two of the articles as saying that a break in the case was imminent.

I do my best thinking on my feet. I went to the window and parted the blinds. A conga line of drunken revelers had spilled from the bar and was winding its way down to the marina. I thought I knew what was going on. Cheeks didn't like Jed Grimes and had decided that he was guilty. As a result, Cheeks had not conducted a thorough investigation. Cops called this personalizing a case. It was the surest way to screw up an investigation that I knew of.

I needed to look at the crime scene. Unlike Cheeks, I wasn't wearing blinders, and I had a suspicion I might see things that Cheeks had missed. Cheeks had warned me not to go there, but I was going to ignore him.

I pulled the phone book out of my desk, and found Jed Grimes's address. He lived in Davie, about a twenty-minute drive. I clapped my hands, and Buster lifted his head.

"Let's go for a car ride," I said.

I got on 595 and headed west. Tourist season was in full swing, and the line of cars' headlights stretched in both directions as far as my eyes could see.

Fifteen minutes later, I exited into a middle-cla.s.s neighborhood sandwiched between Davie and Cooper City, and found myself staring at poorly lit street signs as I searched for Jed Grimes's address. I had once known these streets like the back of my hand. Rampant development had changed that, and blurred the lines between where neighborhoods began and ended.

Five blocks later the scenery changed, and the streets turned mean. The houses were now made of cinder block, and many had iron security bars on their windows. Cars filled with angry young men roamed the streets, looking for trouble. Buster sat at stiff attention beside me, his lip turned up in a snarl.

Jed Grimes's street appeared in my headlights. It was called RichJo Lane, and was lined with falling-down bungalows built during the middle of the last century. I parked in front of a bungalow with yellow police tape surrounding the perimeter. Printed on the mailbox in black Magic Marker was the word Grimes. Grimes.

I took a look around before getting out of my car. It was a rough-looking area. Had I still been a cop, I might have called for backup. I glanced at my dog.

"It's just you and me, pal," I told him.

Buster pawed his seat. He was ready to go. I liked that in a partner. I grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment and opened my door. My dog climbed over me, and ran to the bushes surrounding Jed Grimes's house.

I got out of my car and stood on the sidewalk. Jed's place was dark, and I shined my flashlight at it. Shingles were missing from the roof, the paint peeling like a bad sunburn. The carport was empty, and no one appeared to be at home.

I started to climb over the police tape. The articles I'd read on the Internet had said that Sampson had been abducted from his bedroom in the rear of the house. Stealing kids from their bedrooms was tricky, and I wanted to see how the kidnapper had pulled it off.

Hearing a woman's voice, I stopped what I was doing. Trespa.s.sing on a crime scene was a crime, and I didn't want to get caught in the act.

I looked up and down RichJo Lane, then heard the voice again. It had come from a white trailer parked on the street. I hadn't paid much attention to the trailer, thinking it belonged to a neighbor. Now I took a closer look.

It was the Broward County Sheriff's Department's Operations Center trailer, or what cops called the OC. When kids were abducted, the police parked the OC near the home, and conducted their investigation from it. This allowed the police to be near the crime scene, while giving the child's family some privacy.

A door on the trailer opened, and a young woman came outside and shut the door behind her. She was no more than twenty feet away from me, and stood beneath a streetlight. She started to cross the street, then halted, and looked directly at me.

"Mr. Carpenter? Is that you?"

She was a long-stemmed beauty with slender features and deeply troubled eyes. I couldn't place her, and I stepped forward to get a better look at her.

"Excuse me, but who are you?" I asked.

"Heather Rinker. I played basketball with your daughter in junior high school. You used to drive us to games."

Shock was the best word to describe my reaction. The last time I'd seen Heather, she'd been a skinny little girl in pigtails, and hardly resembled the stunning woman standing before me. I said, "It's been a long time. What are you doing here?"

"I was talking to the detective inside the trailer."

"About what?"

"You don't know?"

I shook my head.

"Sampson Grimes is my son."

I didn't know what to say. I put my hand on her shoulder. As a cop, I couldn't do that, but I wasn't a cop anymore.

"I'm sorry, Heather," I said.

Her eyes welled with tears, and she wiped them away. "I spoke to Jed earlier. He told me that his father's attorney hired you to find Sampson."

"That's right," I said.

"That's what you do, isn't it? You find missing kids."

I nodded. I sensed that Heather was dying inside, but I had to press her. "I need for you to tell me what happened to your son."

"Right now?"

"Now's a good time."

She took a deep breath. "Jed and I got divorced after Sampson was born, and I've been raising him myself. Last year Jed decided he wanted to help raise Sampson, and he sued me for custody rights. The judge said okay, and Sampson's been staying with Jed on weekends.

"It was going okay until this past Sat.u.r.day. I was working, and Jed called me, and said that someone had come into his house through a window, and taken Sampson from his bedroom. Jed was freaking out, and didn't know what to do."

"Was anyone home when this happened?" I asked.

"Jed was, and his friend Ronnie."

"They didn't hear anything?"

Heather shook her head.

"What happened then?" I asked.

"I left work and raced over here. Jed and Ronnie were running around the neighborhood, looking for Sampson, and I joined in. We talked to all the neighbors. n.o.body heard my son cry, or saw a car pull away. It was like..."

Her voice trailed off, and I touched her sleeve.

"Like what?" I asked.

"It was like Sampson disappeared off the face of the earth."

The memory was tearing her apart, and she covered her face with her hands. If I'd learned anything looking for missing kids, it was that children stolen from their bedrooms did not go quietly. They screamed and kicked and sometimes even bit their abductors. Something was not right with her story.

"I need to ask you a question," I said.

Heather lowered her hands.

"The detective handling the investigation thinks Jed did this," I said.

"He's wrong," Heather said.

"You're sure about that."

Heather nodded. "Jed had a rough time growing up. But he's changed. He was trying to do right by Sampson. He wouldn't do this to him. Or to me."

"Where is he?"

"Jed's staying at his mom's place. So am I. The police wanted us nearby, and I just couldn't stay here."

"Are you two back together?"

Heather smiled faintly. "We're trying."

I walked Heather to her car. She drove an aging Toyota Camry with a baby seat strapped in the backseat, and b.u.mper stickers with Sampson's photograph and the word MISSING! MISSING! plastered to the front and back b.u.mpers of her car. plastered to the front and back b.u.mpers of her car.

"I'd like a b.u.mper sticker for my car," I said.

Heather opened the trunk. It contained a cardboard box filled with b.u.mper stickers, and signs with Sampson's photo and a number to call that could be stuck in people's yards. She pulled a b.u.mper sticker and a DVD from the box, and stuck them into my hands.

"I recorded this DVD at Sampson's third birthday party," she said. "I took it around to the TV stations, and asked them to show it on the news."

"That was very smart of you," I said.

I opened the driver's door for her. Heather started to climb in, then paused to look at me with her sad eyes. "Please find my baby, Mr. Carpenter. I can't live without him."

I never made promises when I was looking for missing kids. They only filled people with false hope, and that was not the business I was in.

"I'll try, Heather."

She nodded woodenly, and left without saying good-bye.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

Heather's taillights hung like an afterimage in the darkness. I stuck the b.u.mper sticker to the trunk of my car, and tossed the DVD onto the pa.s.senger seat. Then I clapped my hands for my dog. Buster exploded out of the bushes around Jed's house.

"Time to go to work," I said.

I started to climb over the police tape, and glanced at the OC trailer. Normally, I would have told the detectives inside the trailer that I was here. But Cheek's threat had changed my mind. I wasn't going to talk to anyone with the sheriff's department unless it was absolutely necessary.

I walked around the side of Jed's house to the backyard. The backyard was like most in Broward County, and the size of a postage stamp. Kids' toys were scattered around, including an expensive-looking tricycle and a plastic swimming pool. Jed had obviously indulged his son.

I shined my flashlight at the house. Three windows on the house faced the backyard, all of them screened. The screen on the corner window looked damaged, and was flapping in the breeze. I approached for a closer look.

The screen had been sliced horizontally, the cut about three feet wide. I shined my flashlight through the window, and found myself looking at Sampson's bedroom. A Spiderman mobile hung from the ceiling, and the walls were papered in cartoon characters. Like the backyard, there were toys everywhere. Throughout the room I could see traces of white powder from where a police technician had dusted for fingerprints.

I found the bed with my flashlight. It was built to resemble a miniature race car. The bed was unmade, and the impression of Sampson's body was still in the sheets.

A tiny light beside the bed caught my eye. It was faint, and difficult to see. I shut off my flashlight, and tried to determine what it was.

I realized it was a night-light. Then I saw the second one by the door. A lot of children slept with night-lights, but two was unusual.

Sampson was afraid of the dark.

That bothered me. Most children who were afraid of the dark were also light sleepers. I wondered how Sampson's kidnapper had entered his bedroom without the boy hearing him, and yelling for help.

I was missing something. I stepped back, and started over.

The damaged screen: I had a.s.sumed that the kidnapper had popped it out, and stolen into Sampson's bedroom. But I didn't know that for a fact. I decided to see how difficult it would be, and I put my hands through the slice, and attempted to remove the screen. It refused to budge.

"What the h.e.l.l," I said under my breath.

I inspected the screen's metal frame with my flashlight. It was held down by four screws covered in rust. This screen hadn't been removed for a long time.

I stepped back into the yard. The kidnapper hadn't gone into the bedroom. The boy had come to him and climbed through the slit. That was why no one had heard him leave. The boy had been an accomplice in his own kidnapping.