Origins (Remote) (14 page)

“Come on,” Breed had pleaded, “There’s got to be something. You mean to tell me you don’t have an address for these lines? That’s impossible.”

“Take my word for it, Justin, there’s nothing there,” the man said. “If you’re smart you’ll leave it alone. I can’t give you anything and I’ll probably take an ass chewing just for looking them up. Don’t call me back for a while. A long while.”

Breed hung up the phone and stared at it for a long minute. He’d never gotten the brushoff like that. He picked up the phone again and called Woods. No answer. He was faced with a dilemma. He’d promised Woods to hold off on the article hoping new information would come up to round out the picture. But if that didn’t happen maybe the opposite path could be taken. Maybe an article, loaded with questions, would draw information out of the woodwork. He sat down at his typewriter and got to work. He’d promised Woods to hold off but he could use the time to pose the questions he wanted answered. Just in case.

The University of New Orleans was a commuter college and served the New Orleans and adjacent areas. The student population, unlike that of its sister university in Baton Rouge where students lived and went to school full time, tended to be on campus for part of the day and then move off to work or home. Few students spent their entire day on site.
Cassie and Ronnie finished breakfast, moving among a crowd always on the go and with no time for inquiring about random kids wandering around.

Cassie
had cleaned her tray and pushed Ronnie immediately in the direction of the bookstore where she picked up a copy of the newspaper. She settled on one of the benches outside and found the phone number for the paper’s main offices on the inside of the first page, tearing it off and putting it in her pocket. As she was getting ready to throw it away a headline caught her eye. Breed’s article on their disappearance hadn’t made the front page but it was important enough to be above the fold on the second. It took her only a minute to read the piece and she brought it back to Ronnie, laying it on the bench and tapping it with her finger for him to read. Ronnie finished it quickly and looked up. “It doesn’t say anything about the men in my house,” he said.

“No,
Cassie said, “but I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if Thorne got the paper to cover it up or the police did.”

Ronnie cocked his head to the side.
Cassie could see his mind working things over. She knew he’d been operating in something of a cloud for the last day or so, still trying to deal with what had happened in his home. But the truth was that she was hard pressed herself and needed him to come around to his old self. In a very short time Cassie had come to rely on him. He was the only person in the world who could understand what she was going through, could put himself in her shoes. While Ronnie had slept next to her on the beachside she’d lain awake and wondered what it was inside her that could give her the ability to do what she’d done back at the house. Without him she was disconnected from the world in a very real sense. There were no other people in her experience who could do what they could do. Just as importantly, Ronnie was her connection to normality. With him she could have a future with someone who understood what she was going through and what she’d gone through. Cassie herself didn’t know how this dark thing could rise up inside of her, this thing that allowed her to kill with no sense of guilt. It didn’t seem to bother Ronnie, though he had been flush with remorse over having to do the same thing.

Sitting out in the open on the college grounds she knew that in a very real sense Ronnie and her lives were now tied together. They were already one entity or were well on their way to becoming one entity. She felt at peace with that and was happy for it. But there were no illusions that the peace wouldn’t come at a price. If their lives were to be their own they had to act. Gift of second sight or no gift of second sight they were still people, and if she had anything to say about it they weren’t going to spend any time working for Thorne or anyone like him. Their gift was their gift and they’d use it for what they chose, not have its use chosen for them.

“There’s only one way to find out isn’t there?” Ronnie asked. Cassie nodded. “So let’s find a phone and go call this Justin Breed.”

Woods was sitting in the living room of the Gilmore’s when the phone rang. He had been attempting to make sense out of the whole thing, thinking there was one question he hadn’t asked that would clear up the problem. What that one thing was he didn’t know but he knew if he asked enough questions there was a good chance that he would stumble on it. For their part the Gilmore’s seem to have exhausted their supply of meaningful answers, if they ever had any at all. They were stricken with fear for their son, confused, and existing in a semi-daze. The mother spent her time sitting in the living room next to the phone. The father was next to her when he wasn’t out driving around aimlessly on the off chance of finding his boy. Both sets of parents, the Gilmores and the Reynolds, were convinced that their children had been snatched from under their noses by despicable criminals and were undergoing unimaginable abuse.

Woods wasn’t convinced of anything. But he knew there was a lot more here than a simple runaway situation. He’d questioned Julie Hoffman for hours and couldn’t get anything from her. Yes,
Cassie could have been in her house. No, she didn’t know who the two men were, had no idea. No clue as to why her niece would pack up and run off with the boy, if that was what happened. Wood had been questioning suspects for years and his ability to detect lies was razor sharp. Hoffman knew something but he himself didn’t have enough knowledge to peel it back or force it out of her. Furthermore he wasn’t convinced that these kids were helpless thirteen year olds. The scene at the Aunt’s house told him that these kids could take care of themselves. He was mulling things over all the possible permutations when the phone rang. Sara Gilmore snatched it up.

“Hello.” She waved her arm at Woods, calling him over. “Yes, yes. He’s right here. Hold on a minute.”

Woods went over and picked up the phone.

“Hey, Carl, this is Gene over at the 7th. Get over to the Reynold place. The girl just called her Mom.”

Thorne slammed his phone down, picked it back up, and dialed. He’d been ready to pull back from the Gilmore’s and Reynold’s homes. But something had made him hang on, keeping tabs on the comings and goings of the family. Sooner or later these kids would try to contact somebody and now he’d hit pay dirt. The tap on the phone at the Reynold’s had picked up the call from the girl. A tape of the conversation was on its way. But more importantly the phone she used was located. They were still in the Elysian Fields area, using a phone on the campus of the college.

He got in touch with his crew leader. Every man available was to be pulled and sent immediately. He had enough men to cover the major streets around the school in case they slipped through. The campus itself would get the most attention. Smart kids, he thought. Hide yourself right in the middle of a bunch of people. One thing Thorne knew is that nobody could hide forever. Countless missions had proven that. When you had a cover on family and friends, sooner or later the chickens would come home or give themselves up by contacting them. He grabbed his keys and headed for the garage and his car. This time there’d be no screw-ups. He’d see to that personally.

Breed picked up the line, punching the flashing button and nestling the receiver on his shoulder. He’d left a message for Woods, intending to let him know that his article was scheduled for release in the morning edition in two days. The piece was painfully thin on facts and heavy on speculation. The withholding of information on the attack at the Gilmore residence, along with the connection the two children shared via the scholarship program, featured heavily along with the burning of the Aunt’s house. Breed was pushing for some feedback, someone who could put all the disparate pieces together. Woods wouldn’t like it, especially the part about the deaths, but it was time to go public.

“Breed here,” he said, expecting to get a chewing out from the detective when he told him the news. But the voice on the other end wasn’t Woods.

“Mr. Breed?” The voice on the line was young, a girl.

“Yes, who is this please?” Breed said. The last thing he needed was some kid bothering him.

“This is Cassie Reynold. You wrote an article about me and my friend Ronnie the other day.”

Breed was stunned. He hesitated for a moment before catching himself. “Yes I did. There are a lot of people worried about you. Where are you? Are you with the boy?”

“Yes, he’s right here with me. We plan on calling my Mom after we get off the phone with you. But we wanted to talk to you first. Why didn’t your article say anything about the dead men in Ronnie’s house?”

Breed thought about that for a minute. If they’d seen the article it meant that they were probably still somewhere around New Orleans. The outlying editions hadn’t carried the story. He picked up a pad and pencil.

“Where are you Cassie?” he asked. But the girl was having none of it.

“Answer my question. Why didn’t you say anything about the men in the house? Ronnie says either one or both of them are dead. Did you know about that or did you just get your story from the police?”

Breed was faced with a decision here. From what he’d seen and heard from Woods he knew this kid was probably smarter than him. If she found out he wasn’t being straight with her she’d hang up. Better to tell her the truth and keep her talking. She and the boy were the only ones he knew right now that could tell him the whole story.

“The police asked me to keep that out. They didn’t want to panic anyone. I told them I’d hold off for a day or two. I just finished writing up everything for another article. It’s got everything we know, the men at Ronnie’s house and the men at your Aunt’s house too. It ties them together.
Cassie, what the hell is going on? Who are these men? Why do they after you and Ronnie?”

The voice on the other end hesitated. “Are you sure it was the police that asked you to keep it out? Not somebody else? I can find out you know.”

“The guy that’s working your case is named Carl Wood. He’s a detective with NOPD. I can give you his number if you want.”

“OK,”
Cassie said, “give it to me.” Woods recited the number. “Cassie, I’d like to help you if I can but I don’t know what’s going on. Neither does Detective Woods. What’s happening here?”

“I don’t know if I can trust you yet,” the girl replied, “or the detective. I’m not going to call him yet but I want you to tell him to look into two guys who came to our school. One is named Clinton Farrow and the other is named James Ruff. Their boss is a guy named Thorne. I don’t know his first name but Ronnie says his office is downtown. They were supposed to be testing us for scholarships but that’s not what they were doing. I’m going to hang up now, Mr. Breed.”

Breed held her on. “Wait, why can’t you trust me? Why can’t you trust the detective? Tell me what’s happening.”

“We don’t trust anyone right now Mr. Breed. I’ve got to call my mother now.”

“Are you going home?” Breed asked. He reached for his coat. If they were headed home he wanted to be at the house.

“No,”
Cassie said, and the phone went dead.

The call to her mother had been fast and emotional. Cassie was crying when she finally put down the phone, having given her mother no information other than that she was fine and with Ronnie. She’d be home as soon as she could. Explanations would have to wait for later. Her mother cried too, told her in no uncertain terms that she was to come home immediately. Cassie gave her the number for Ronnie’s parents and asked her to call them. “I love you, Mom. Tell Dad I love him too. I’ll get in touch when I can.” She hung up, wiped the tears from her face, and pulled Ronnie away.

They headed off to a snack room in the back, set away from the cafeteria on the opposite end of the building. Ronnie got a couple of Cokes from the machine and they sat on the hard plastic chairs while
Cassie recovered herself. He’d seen her like this only once before and knew that she would get it together pretty quickly. He sat and waited, watching the students and teachers flow in and out of the building. Breakfast was over and most were headed in and out of the study rooms along either side of the wide hallway. The book store had opened and a few students headed that way while others lingered on stone benches scattered inside.

“You okay now?” Ronnie asked.

“Sure. I just got a little upset talking to my Mom.” Cassie said. She turned to look out the window. Outside across the grass was the levee and further beyond that was the amusement park where they’d spent the night. Their bags were still hidden away there. They’d have to head back soon. For right now though, they were content to sit in the little room with the glass front and relax.

“Do you trust this reporter?” Ronnie had been doing some thinking of his own. “I’m not sure I do. What if Thorne got to him and they’re covering the whole thing up? They could be controlling what gets reported couldn’t they?”

“I was thinking the same thing. But I don’t know how we can find out. Sooner or later we’re going to have to trust someone I guess, don’t you think? We can set up a meeting somewhere. But it’s got to be someplace in the open. And we set ourselves up where we can watch the place before and we can get away if we have to.” Ronnie nodded, picked up their empties and threw them in the trashcan.