Noah's Rainy Day (41 page)

“Where do we begin?” I asked.

“Gates’s people narrowed the list to offenses involving children, and we’ve been working with their unit to look at the offenders and the ages of children, just in case.”

I shuddered again. I realized little Max was in grave danger. This guy in the dark coat on the airport video had no intention of returning the boy any time soon. Or ever.

Jack explained the series of color video clips from the toll area in, starting from the abductor’s arrival to DIA, his dark coat draped over the front seat and what appeared to be the strap of a small backpack looped over the back. He was not wearing sunglasses. His hair was jet black. Like shoe polish. Jack explained the time lapses between segments. “It appears this guy was impersonating a janitor, loitering around the airport for hours. We have him changing clothes. He goes into the bathroom and comes out with a dowager’s hump. Broom in hand.”

Jack flipped over to the grayscale videos from inside the airport and showed us the clipped series with time stamps. The man wearing coveralls with a blue airport vest had a stocking cap pulled low on his head, earphones, and thick-rimmed glasses with what looked like sports tape on the
nosepiece. His facial features were all but obscured, and if they hadn’t been tracking the video of the man going in and coming out, we’d never have known it was the same man.

“The backpack? Under his coveralls?” Streeter asked, pointing at the man’s humped back.

I thought about the backpack I’d found in the woods yesterday morning, which seemed like decades ago, and wondered if that child met the same fate as little Max. My gut twisted.

“That’s my guess. You nailed it in the initial video, Streeter. Maybe he was lonely on Christmas Day. Maybe he was waiting for someone. Although we don’t have direct proof, it appears from the direction he leaves the cameras’ view that he heads directly to the airport’s food court area, near the Buckhorn, where he apparently spent most of his time.”

Streeter added skeptically, “My guess is he was looking for an opportunity to snatch a kid or had been paid to snatch the Williams kid, but my money’s on the former, not the latter. He was just waiting around until a child wandered across his path unescorted. The fact that he had the hidden backpack with a girl’s coat and hat in it will be evidence that this crime was premeditated.”

Jack agreed. “It appears so. Watch.”

As the time drew closer to little Max’s disappearance, the man swept up spilt popcorn between the food court and the restrooms in the main concourse. After a forty-five minute lapse, just ten minutes before the Williams boy’s disappearance, the janitor pushed a broom near Buckhorn Bar and Grill where little Max was last seen.

“Wearing what we believe are green coveralls, an airport employee blue vest, no overcoat, and a big hunchback,” Jack explained. “From the DIA diagrams that Liv provided, this guy probably hovered under the overhang near the Buckhorn for forty-five minutes as he scoped the concourse for prey.” Jack’s voice cracked. “Probably used candy to entice the kid to come to him initially, just as Liv suggested. We’re speculating since this guy avoided the cameras and obscured his facial features with the phony glasses, but we assume he spots the Williams kid and bolts to take advantage of the opportunity. Hard to watch.”

The man reappeared on the exit camera wearing the dark coat, no longer carrying any backpack or bag, but holding the hand of a small child that was dressed in a pink coat and hat.

“We got him,” Streeter growled, his eyes fixed on the screen.

Tony whistled and repeated, “We got him.”

“How many names do we have so far on the narrowed list of violent sex offenders?” Streeter asked.

“Well, by process of elimination—those we could account for, such as those who are incarcerated—we’re down to this.” He handed Streeter the sheets. I peeked over his shoulder. Thirty-six names. None I recognized. A lot of people to follow up on.

“Any that fit the description we have on this guy so far?” Streeter asked.

Gates nodded. “Six of them. I have surveillance people in the field as we speak waiting to pull them in, if you’d like.”

Streeter studied the list the chief handed him. So did I.

“Watch these clips,” Linwood said as the images flashed quickly on the screen. He pointed at the image of the cars departing DIA. One image was of a lone man in a two-tone brown station wagon. “The time lapse would be about right for this guy leaving the parking ramps. I can’t really tell, but doesn’t that look like him? No dark coat, but aren’t those the same coveralls he was wearing when he entered DIA? The sunglasses? The greasy-looking hair?”

“That’s him,” Streeter said confidently.

“Any sign of little Max?” I asked, nausea roiling.

“No.”

Streeter answered, “He’s probably got him hiding on the floor in the backseat, covered by a blanket or something.”

“That’s what we figured,” Linwood said.

Streeter asked, “Jack, what does the profile from BSU look like?”

Jack shuffled quickly through his stack of papers and computer printouts. “If I had to guess, this guy is probably an introverted preferential child molester, rather than a seduction or sadistic type, although I haven’t ruled out the sadistic type altogether.”

Jack was amazing. And smart. I asked, “What is the introverted type?”

Streeter said, “It means our guy is a dirty old man, the type of guy who gets off on targeting strangers and very young children. He’s the flasher we find at playgrounds and school yards.”

“That’s sick,” I said, grimacing in disgust.

Jack added, “Introverted preferential child molesters tend to range in age from sixteen to eighty, are typically male, engage in minimal
conversation with their victims, prefer hanging around places children frequent like playgrounds as Streeter suggested, and target total strangers, particularly the very young. Although introverted types often engage in passive sexual encounters with their victims, such as exposing themselves, they can become more aggressive, which is why I said I haven’t completely ruled out that this guy may indeed be more of the sadistic type.”

Streeter said, “The good thing for us is that if this man is an introverted preferential child molester, that means he will likely have left a trail. It’s so hard to prove child molestation cases, but with repetitious behavior patterns, it makes it a hell of a lot easier.”

“Precisely,” Jack agreed. “He has taken a big risk to acquire his victim at DIA. He might move unexpectedly after this. He’s probably never been married, lives alone, lived with his parents most of his life, has a nearly nonexistent social life, never dates, has no relationships with his peers, and has an obsession with young children, treating them almost as if they were his possessions. If I had to guess, it’s highly likely he was sexually abused as a child and has already molested several, maybe dozens of young kids already. Most likely we will never know how many children this guy has molested because he’s probably a master at manipulating young children to get what he wants from them, and seduces them with attention and gifts to assure their silence.”

I added, “These perverted ass … asinine people have a sixth sense for sniffing out the vulnerable,” I added, noticing Jack’s and Streeter’s stares. I ignored them. “It’s almost like a predator’s instinctual ability to single out the weakest of the prey before pouncing.”

Holding up the reports Jack had handed him, Streeter added, “These people can single out the one child in a crowd who comes from a broken home or who has been molested before.”

Jack turned back to the video and the grainy image of the creep in the overcoat. “This guy reminds me of a vulture who circles his prey from miles above. He targeted little Max once he sensed the young boy was suffering from parental neglect.”

“Oh my gosh, Streeter! You were right all along. Your instinct. This isn’t a kidnapping for money. Never was,” I said.

“And my instinct tells me we won’t find anything with these six violent
sex offenders, but Gates, tell your surveillance teams to get going and move in on them,” Streeter said. “This is no time for my instincts to be wrong. In the meantime, let’s focus on the nonviolent list of sexual predators involving children. Lengthy, but I bet our guy is on this list.”

Gates hurried to the other side of the room, cell phone in hand, and started barking orders. Streeter set the short list aside and studied the long list of offenders. Names. Addresses.

At the thought of poor little Max’s fate, my voice squeaked, “This creep has no intention of returning little Max.” I felt the color drain from my face as quickly as I spoke the words.

As if on cue, Tony’s cell phone rang at the exact time my cell phone rang.

I answered and Frances’s voice said, “Liv, I need help.”

“Not now, Frances. I’m in the middle of something.”

“It’s Noah. He thinks he talked with the missing boy.” Her words were choppy, troubled. Serious. She hadn’t called me Boots, which alarmed me.

“Sis?” My eyes flew up to meet Jack’s, then Streeter’s, both men studying me carefully.

To remain focused, I lowered my eyes to the long list in Streeter’s hand. An address popped out at me, one in nearby Wheat Ridge, Colorado, on the street where my sister lived.

Gates ended his call first. I could hear him tell Streeter and Jack, “Sorry for the interruption, but a man called who thinks there’s something suspicious with a little girl who’s visiting at his neighbor’s house, and he wants to meet with me.”

Jack said, “Are you going?”

He shook his head. “I’ll let my chief deputy handle it until we’re done with our raid on the short-list suspects. Experience tells me that when something like the Maximillian Bennett Williams III abduction floods the networks and media outlets during the holidays, we’ll get plenty of people whose imaginations have run away from them.”

Everything came flooding toward me at once. I could hear the men talking while I was trying to decipher my sister’s story about Noah crying, having a seizure, banging his knuckles on the glass, banging his head on the window, the five-finger message of “girl,” and the laugh. Something
about Dad polishing his shoes. And the address on Streeter’s list. Something gnawed at me. As Frances ended her call with me abruptly, my sense was that my sister was hysterical and was headed to the Denver Police Department to make a report, to meet Gabriel. I stood for a moment staring at the phone in my hands, then at the list in Streeter’s.

“Wait!” I said, stuffing my cell phone in my pocket. Tony was leaving, and I had only half heard what was happening. I asked him, “What was his name?”

“Who?” Tony asked, stopping just short of the door.

“The guy who called you.”

“Hogarty. Why?”

“Gabriel Hogarty’s my brother-in-law.” The men swung their gazes toward me. I pointed at the name on the long list of suspects in Streeter’s hand. “2291 Hedge Road in Wheat Ridge. Jason Horace Fletcher. That’s my sister’s neighbor. Noah says he talked to the girl with black hair. But he thinks she’s really a boy. He heard her laugh and thinks it’s not a girl at all but little Max in disguise.”

“Who’s Noah?” Chief Gates asked.

“A very brave, very smart little boy, and my nephew.”

Noah

MOM HUNG UP THE
phone with Auntie Liv and ruffled my short brown hair. I arched my back and tried to stretch my bent arm toward her, succeeding with one quick, spastic movement long after she had walked away.

I talked to my mom as she hurried through the house grabbing last-minute items and turning off lights. A string of vowels was all I could manage, but my thoughts were clear. I wanted to tell her to calm down and to hurry up at the same time. She was doing the hurrying just fine, but I didn’t sense her calm. She was mumbling as she moved about.

Normally, I preferred being with my mom over anyone else because she listened to me as if my moans and gurgles were more than that, as if they were words in conversation, even if it was all just in my imagination. I loved being alone with her. Not that I didn’t love being with the rest of my family. I did. It was just that my mom was always so calm, open, and attentive when we were alone. Nothing distracted or troubled her. She was usually totally relaxed. She was the most beautiful when she was relaxed.

This was a side of her I don’t think I’d ever seen before. Totally not relaxed. Not calm. She was frazzled. She’d already put two sweaters and a
coat on me and seemed to have forgotten she’d done it. Scatterbrained. I’m glad she’d managed to call Auntie Liv because it seemed to have calmed her enough to think. At least a little bit.

My mom leaned against the kitchen counter and combed her long hair with her splayed fingers, holding her palm against her forehead. She was stressed and deep in thought. The top three buttons of her denim work shirt were unbuttoned, revealing the white cotton T-shirt underneath. Her faded blue jeans hung loosely on her thin frame and had the initial frays of a hole above her right knee. She wore oversized white cotton socks on her feet. Her fair skin had a glow, not like the one after her early morning workout, but instead due to the tension of worrying about the child next door. Although she normally wore mascara, today was a holiday and she hadn’t planned to go anywhere, so she’d skipped it. Her clear blue eyes, normally so pure and kind, looked wild. Even still, she was a striking beauty, just like my dad says.

But stress didn’t look as good on her, if you ask me. She looked more like a caged animal. And it was kind of scaring me.

The nine o’clock news program was blaring from the living room and the anchorwoman recounted the top news of the day, which of course was about the missing boy from yesterday. The news reporter was saying “ . . . and closer to home, the top news story in national news is the disturbing story about the disappearance of Maximillian Bennett Williams III from the Denver International Airport yesterday.” Images of the boy and the airport flashed on the screen as the woman summarized the story of the boy’s mysterious disappearance.