Full Tilt - Rick Mofina

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he did and missed and we haven’t recovered the rounds yet. My gut tells me we’re just scratching the surface here, Paul.”

      As Dickson shook his head in puzzlement, Brennan returned to the woman’s dying words.

       There are others.

      * * *

      The bright yellow plastic tape surrounding the blackened remnants of the barn bounced in the midday breeze. Techs from Troop B’s forensic unit, clad in white-hooded coveralls and facial masks, continued their painstaking processing of the ruins.

      Mitch Komerick, the senior investigator who headed the squad, brushed ash from his cheek as he pulled down his mask to meet Brennan and Dickson at the southwest corner of the line.

      “Got your message on the update, Ed,” Komerick said.

      “Find a gun?”

      Komerick wiped the sweaty soot streaks from his face, then shook his head.

      “No weapon and no rounds, or casings, so far.”

      Brennan nodded and looked off in frustration.

      “There are deep fissures where we found the male,” Komerick said, “big enough to easily swallow a gun. My money says that’s where it is. We’re going to put a drainpipe camera down there. We’re far from done.”

      “All right.”

      “My people have gridded the scene, and we’ll sift through every square inch of the property. We’ve sent the pickup down to the lab in Ray Brook for processing. The arson team says an accelerant, probably unleaded fuel, was used, so the fire was intentional.”

      “Okay.”

      “But we’ve got something to show you, something disturbing. Suit up.”

      After Brennan pulled on coveralls, he followed Komerick and his instructions on where to step as he led him into the destruction. The smell of charred lumber and scorched earth was heavy. Some of the singed beams had been removed and stacked neatly to the side, revealing sections that had been processed. There was a heap of small machinery, now charred metal. Komerick pointed to the wreckage. “Look, these were livestock stalls that someone converted to small rooms, confinement cells.”

      “How can you tell? It’s such a mess.”

      “We found heavy doors with locks, metal shackles and hardware anchored in the walls and floors, remains of mattresses, at least half-a-dozen cells so far. Somebody was definitely using the place, possibly for porno movies, for bondage, for torture. God only knows, Ed.”

      Brennan felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising.

      “Mitch, over here!”

      One of the forensic technicians was on his knees delicately brushing the ground with the care of an archaeologist. Another technician was recording it.

      “Look,” the technician said while clearing the small object, “we can run this through missing persons databases and ViCAP.”

      Rising from the grave of sooty earth and ash was a fine chain and a stylized charm of a guardian angel.

      New York City

      Kate Page, a reporter with Newslead, the global news service, blinked back tears as she consoled the anguished father, who she’d reached on his phone in Oregon.

      The man on the line was Sam Rutlidge. His eleven-year-old son, Jordan, had vanished six years ago while walking to the corner store, two blocks from his home in Eugene, Oregon. Kate was writing a feature on missing persons across the country, on the toll cold cases exact on the families.

      “I accept that he’s gone,” Sam said, “and before cancer took my wife, she told me she’d accepted it, too, that she’d see our boy in heaven. But I need to know what happened to him. Not knowing hurts every day, like an open wound that won’t heal, you know?”

      Kate knew.

      She underlined his words in her notebook, the quotes she’d use in her story. Her heart ached for Sam, a haunted trucker. She asked him a few more questions before thanking him for the interview.

      After hanging up, Kate cupped her face in her hands and let out a long breath. Then she walked from her desk across the newsroom to the floor-to-ceiling windows where she looked at the skyline of midtown Manhattan.

       It never gets any easier.

      A part of her died each time she talked to a grieving mom or dad. It always resurrected her own pain. When Kate was seven years old her mother and father had died in a hotel fire. After the tragedy, Kate and her little sister, Vanessa, lived with relatives, then in foster homes. Two years after their parents’ deaths, Kate and Vanessa’s foster parents took them on a vacation. They were driving in the Canadian Rockies when their car flipped over and crashed into a river.

      The images—hell, that moment in her life—were fused into her DNA.

       The car sinking...everything moving in slow motion...the windows breaking open...the freezing water...grabbing Vanessa’s hand...pulling her out...nearing the surface...the icy current numbing her...her fingers loosening...Vanessa slipping away...disappearing... Why couldn’t I hold you? I’m so sorry, so sorry.

      Kate was the only one who’d survived.

      Her sister’s body had never been found. Searchers reasoned that it got wedged in the rocks downriver. Still, in her heart, Kate never gave up believing that Vanessa had somehow gotten out of the river.

      Over the years, Kate had age-progressed photos of Vanessa made and submitted them with details to missing persons groups. She drew on her contacts with them, with police and the press, and she looked into open cases. But any leads always dead-ended.

      It had become her private obsession.

       Why was I the only one of my family to survive?

      Wherever Kate went, she secretly looked into the faces of strangers who might now resemble her sister. For twenty years, Kate’s life had been a search for forgiveness.

       I know it’s irrational, I know it’s crazy and I should just let it go.

      But she couldn’t. It’s the reason she’d become a reporter.

      “Kate, are we going to see your feature today?”

      She turned to see Reeka Beck, Newslead’s deputy features editor, and her immediate boss, standing behind her.

      Reeka was twenty-six years old, razor-sharp with degrees from Harvard and Yale. A rising star, she’d worked in Newslead’s Boston bureau and was part of the team whose collective work was a finalist for a Pulitzer.

      Her thumbs blurred as she finished typing a text message on her phone, then she stared at Kate. Reeka’s cover-girl face was cool and businesslike while she waited for Kate to answer.

      “Yes. It’ll be done today.”

      “It’s not on the budget list.”

      “It is. I put it on yesterday.”

      “Has it got a news angle?”

      “It’s a feature. We talked about this with—”

      “I know we talked about it, but we’d get better pickup with a news peg.”

      “I’m adding the latest justice figures on unsolv—”

      “Maybe you could find a case police are close to solving.”

      “I know how to write news—”

      “Did you remember to arrange art for your story?”

      Kate let the tense silence that passed between them scream

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