Rod (25 page)

“Sure,” she tells him.

“Alright.
 
I’m Officer Ghent and I just need to get the details of what happened
for our report.”

She nods in agreement.

“Okay, so tell me what happened and start
from the beginning from when you were on your way to school on the day of the
kidnapping,” he instructs her.

“Okay.
 
I was walking to school and this man drove his van up to the
sidewalk.
 
Another older man gets out and
calls me by name.”

“So he identified you by your full name?”

“Yeah.
 
He said, ‘Sasha Fitzgerald, sweetheart,’ as he walked over to me.
 
I wasn’t sure who he was, so I told him that
my mom said I shouldn’t talk to strangers.”

“Alright,” Officer Ghent says to get her
to keep going.

“So he says, ‘I know, your mother is a
smart woman for keeping you safe.’
 
And I
nod because he’s right.
 
He tells me that
he’s my grandfather and that my mother doesn’t like him.
 
So I felt bad for him.
 
He told me that my mother hates him, but he
has only wanted to spend some time with me.”

“Okay,” the officer tells her as he
scribbles this information down in his notepad.

“I told him that I had to go to school,
but he said that my dad told him that he could pick me up and take me back to
his house.
 
He said that he had a lot of
video games, candy and ice cream that we could enjoy.
 
He told me that it would be only for a few
hours and then my dad would pick me up from there.”

Officer Ghent continues writing, only
taking breaks to maintain eye contact with Sasha.

“So the other man helped me into the van
and the man who said he was my grandfather let me sit in the front seat.
 
We stopped for ice cream cones, so I thought
it was okay.”

I pull her closer to me as tears well up
in her eyes.
 
“It’s alright, you’re safe
now.”

“When we got there, the place was all
stinky, like old people and garbage.
 
The
man turned on the television set and left me in the living room.
 
I watched a few cartoons, but I wasn’t sure
what was going on.
 
The men went into the
kitchen to talk and I got bored.”

“Okay, then what?” He presses her.

“There wasn’t anything to do there, but
the older man sat on the couch with me and began asking me a bunch of
questions,” she tells us.

“Questions? Like what?” He asks.

“Like how I’m doing in school and if I have
a boyfriend,” she says scrunching up her nose.

She continues, “So I told him about my
science class project and the A that I got on it and how I passed my math
test.
 
He seemed to be interested.
 
I don’t have a boyfriend, they’re gross.”

“So he tried to continue the fake story
that he gave you?” he asks her.

“Yeah, pretty much.
 
I knew that it was getting late, though,
because the sun went down.
 
So I asked
what time my dad was coming to get me.
 
He said that my dad called him and asked him to keep me overnight.
  
I was pretty tired and he gave me something
to eat, so I slept on the couch.”

“What happened the next day?” he asks her.

“He kept telling me that he was really
lonely and only wanted some company.
 
He
told me that my mother has never visited him and he’s sad.
 
I watched TV with him all day and we ate some
chips all day.”

“He fed you potato chips for breakfast,
lunch, and dinner?” I ask her.

“Yeah.
 
I didn’t mind, I like chips,” she tells me.

“So what happened the following day?”
Officer Ghent asks her.

“Well, the next day I started to wonder
what was going on.
 
I was missing my mom,
my dad, and my sister and I wanted to see them.
 
It was so boring there.
 
So I
asked the man if he could just take me to see my dad.”

“How did he reply?” he asks her.

“He said that he was sorry to be the one
to tell me, but my dad was in a car accident and was at the hospital.
 
He wanted the old man to watch me until my
dad got better.”

As she’s talking, she’s continually wiping
the tears from her eyes.
 
Officer Ghent reassures
her that she hasn’t done anything wrong, but tears still escape her eyes.

“I was so worried about my dad, but the
old man said that he would be fine and that he just needed time to
recover.
 
So I waited there with
him.
 
The next day, I asked him if he
could call my mother to have her come get me.”

“What did he say?” Officer Ghent asks.

“He said that she was at the hospital with
my dad, but if she knew I was there with him, she would probably beat my butt.”

“Were the other men present during this time?”
he asks.

“No, not until I waited a couple more days
and threw a fit at the old man.
 
He was
weird and he smelled terrible.
 
I
screamed at him that I wanted to see my family, but he just kept telling me
that he couldn’t do that.
 
I screamed
some more and then he said that he would call my mother and that I would have
to face the consequences.”

“Okay, and then what?” the officer asks,
writing notes.

“I told him that I didn’t care and that I
only wanted to go home.
 
So he made a
phone call and said that my mom was on her way to get me.
 
A while later, the two other men show up and
they tied me up and put something around my mouth so I couldn’t talk.
 
They put something over my eyes so I couldn’t
see, but I could hear them talking.”

“What did they say?”

“Just that they were going to take me
somewhere else in case someone gets suspicious and comes to the old man’s
door.
 
One of the men said that he was
happy to be getting a lot of money for this job, but I don’t know what he was
talking about.”

“Did they take you someplace else?” he
asks.

“Yeah, they put me in a car or something
and we drove for a little while.
 
The one
guy carried me up some stairs and I heard a door closing.
 
That place smelled better, but I was hungry
and had to pee.”

“Did they let you use the bathroom?” I ask
her quietly.

“No, they took the thing off of my eyes
and put a big white bucket in the corner of the room.
 
The fat guy said that I could use that to go
to the bathroom.”

Tears once again drip from her eyes and
she tries desperately to stifle them back, but is unsuccessful.

“I’m going to ask you something and it’s
very personal, but you have to be brave, alright?”

She looks up at the officer and nods.

“Did any of those men touch you?”

“They picked me up and grabbed me and
shoved me places.
 
What do you mean?” she
asks.

The officer looks to me for help and I
turn her attention to me.

“What he’s trying to ask is whether or not
they touched you in your private areas,” I tell her as gently as possible.

“
Ewww
no,” she
says with a look of horror on her face.

“Okay good,” the officer says.
 
“Alright, so tell me what happened
next.
”

“They did watch me use this stupid bucket,
the jerks,” she exclaims.
 
I cringe as I
sit next to her and fathom what we are all going to do to these guys when my father
learns of what happened to Sasha.

“Do you think it was just to make sure you
wouldn’t get away?” he asks her.

“Probably.
 
I wanted to kick them so hard.
 
They made me sit on the couch and do nothing with my eyes and mouth
covered and my hands tied.
 
I was so
hungry, but they gave me something to eat, like, once a day.”

“Go on,” he tells her.

 
“The house was stinky, but it got worse
later.”

“What happened then?”

“The house smelled like a skunk and I
heard the men laughing in another room.
 
It sounded like they were having a party or something.”

“I guess the guy wanted me to leave, so
they put me in this colder place that was smaller, like the van I saw when they
picked me up.
 
I smelled something awful
in this new place, but it didn’t take me long to realize that they shoved the
bucket in there with me.”

“Did they untie you to use the bucket?” he
asks.

“Yeah, once or twice, but for the rest of
the time, they told me to hold it.
 
I
held it once, but I couldn’t do it again.
 
I am so gross,” she tells us, embarrassment flooding her cheeks to a red
color.

“Is that when your sister and her
boyfriend found you?” he asks her.

“Yeah, they found me where the men left
me.”

“Alright, I’ll get this processed and let
your mother and father know the outcome.
 
You are one brave little girl, you know that?” he tells her, giving her
a reassuring nudge.

“Thanks, but I just can’t wait to get home
and take a bath,” she tells him.
 

“You did a great job, Sasha.
 
I think the cops are going to put those guys
away for a very long time,” I tell her.

“Think so?” she asks.

“Yep, I sure do,” I tell her.

“Good, they shouldn’t be allowed to do
that stuff,” she tells me.

“You are absolutely right.”

“Do you know why they did this to me?” she
asks me.

“No idea, but you can bet that we’re going
to find out,” I tell her.

I hold her tightly and she sees something
familiar coming our way.

“My mom’s here!” she shouts as she gets up
to run toward the car.

Her mother pulls up to the side of the
road, parks the car and runs out to hug Sasha.
 
They’re both standing in the middle of the street bawling their eyes
out, hugging.
 
I feel full relief as the
officer comes back over to talk to me.

“You’re Sasha’s sister?” he asks me.

“Yeah, half-sister, actually,” I tell him.

“I have a few questions for you if you
don’t mind,” he says.

“Sure.”

“What led you to finding your sister
here?” he asks.

“I asked a bunch of questions from the
members of our motorcycle club to see if they knew anything about her
disappearance.
 
One guy apparently kept
bragging about coming into a lot of money.”

“Which guy?”

“A guy named Ken Clayton.
 
He kept talking to the new guys about how he
was going to hit the mother lode.
 
So I
looked into it and sure enough, he got thousands.
 
The other guy, Boris
Cardov
,
also got thousands, so I was curious if there was any connection.”

“And was there?” he asks me.

“Yeah, as it turns out, those deposits
were for a job for a man named Seth Vinton.
 
Seth paid off Ken, Boris and the old guy Lester Samson to kidnap my
sister.”

“Do you have any idea why they would do
that?”

“They did it so that we would all be
distracted for a club takeover,” I tell him.

“They wanted your territory?” he asks.

“Yeah, basically,” I say.

“We run a clean motorcycle club, no
outlaws, no drugs and no criminals,” I tell him matter-of-factly.

“I’ve heard the name Seth Vinton before,”
he says.

“He’s a notorious criminal from around
Hayleysville
.”

“Makes sense,” he tells me.

“So you followed the trail that led you
here?”

“Yeah, with Rodney’s help.”

“Rodney?
 
Your boyfriend over there?” He says, motioning to Rodney.

“Yeah.”

“What’s Rodney’s last name so we can get
his statement?”

“Rodney Vinton,” I tell him and wait for
the light bulb to go off.

“Vinton, huh?
 
Any relation to our criminal mastermind?” he
asks.

“Yeah, Rodney is Seth Vinton’s son.
 
He came to our club to get away from the
criminals in his father’s club.
 
He was a
huge help in all of this.”